Vintage Baby Names: Testing the 100-year rule
In the world of baby names, there's something called The Hundred Year Rule, which holds that it takes a full century for a name to shake off its dusty image and sound fresh again.
When we look at the popularity lists for a hundred years ago -- 1923 -– we see any number of vintage baby names that have already popped back, names like Grace, Ruby, Emma, Ella, Violet, Sadie, Ruby, Isabel, Max, Oliver and Felix.
The question is, are there any names from a century ago that we’ve overlooked and are still worthy of re-evaluation? Here are some you might consider from the popularity list of 1923—although we do have to keep in mind that the US population then was about 30% of what it is now, so some of these names were attached to a very small number of babies.
- Adelia
- Agnes
- Aili
- Albertine
- Amalia
- Antonia
- Ara
- Aurelia
- Avis
- Bernadine
- Bethel
- Celestine
- Coletta
- Cordelia
- Delphine
- Delta
- Dorothea
- Easter
- Erie
- Florrie
- Geneva
- Hattie
- Inez
- Kitty
- Lelia
- Lottie
- Lucretia
- Lula
- Magnolia
- Mamie
- May
- Minerva
- Nella
- Nova
- Octavia
- Odessa
- Opal
- Ophelia
- Ouida
- Palma
- Pauline
- Polly
- Roxie
- Theodora
- Thora
- Tillie
- Verona
- Veva
- Viola
- Winifred
- Winnie
- Zadie
- Abner
- Ambrose
- Archibald
- Augustine
- Basil
- Benedict
- Casper
- Chester
- Claude
- Clement
- Cleve
- Clyde
- Dorsey
- Dudley
- Floyd
- Grover
- Hiram
- Homer
- Jarvis
- Judson
- Kermit
- Lionel
- Lonzo
- Loyal
- Lyle
- Mack
- Morris
- Norris
- Otto
- Perry
- Raleigh
- Roscoe
- Rufus
- Smith
- Valentine
- Vernon
- Virgil