A List of Trendy Old Fashioned Names

Curiously appealing, in a hoop-skirted, wasp-waisted way, Ottoline has recently entered the realm of modern possibility, especially since Sienna Miller chose it as the middle name of her daughter Marlowe.

Ollie is used less often as a nickname for the mega-popular Olivia or the stylish Olive than Ellie is for Eleanor or Allie for Allison. That may be because Ollie has a much longer use as a nickname for boys.

With Isabel getting so popular, parents are searching for new varieties of the name, and Isabeau is one that makes a lovely French twist.

This Ashley-like surname name actually made the US Top 1000 around the turn of the 20th century. Used very quietly today in equal numbers -- about a dozen each -- for boys and girls. Ashby is a major thoroughfare in Berkeley, California.

A kind of old-fashioned nickname name that's enjoying some fresh life thanks to trendy brother Lane. Lainie is a more old-school spelling.

Distinctive yet familiar, Olin is both a Scandinavian name and an English surname. Currently a rare choice, yet reminiscent of popular options, like Oliver, Orion, and Colin.

Though she has long stood on her own, Elke has many longer cross-cultural connections, to the Dutch/German/Scandinavian Adelheid and Alice and the English Adelaide, as a feminine version of Elkanah and as a Yiddish form of Eleanor.

Bunny may be adorable, but is it really enough of a name for your daughter? Plus if Buffy is fluffy, what would that make Bunny?

In the Bible, Beulah is a place, not a person, applied to the land of Israel by the prophet Isaiah. The land of Beulah has sometimes been considered a reference to heaven. Beulah began to be used as a given name in England at the time of the Reformation and was used by the seventeenth century Puritans.

Medieval name without much of a future.

A name with a number of variations including the Danish Tyge, the Swedish Tyko, and the Dutch Tygo, which are popular throughout modern Europe. Tycho was also the name of both a 5th century Greek saint and the Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe.

Gallagher is, like so many of its genre, friendly, open, and optimistic. Some might associate it with the fraternal members of the band Oasis, Noel and Liam Gallagher.

Updates Allison—which everyone will misunderstand it as. But it's definitely a fresh spin on the Ellie names, and a rising surname name choice for girls.

Old-time nickname that's following in the fashionable footsteps of cronies Jake and Sam. Abe feels both fresher and cuter -- which is maybe the same thing? -- than those choices right now. You can also get to Abe via Abel, which may prove a friendlier formal name than the gray-bearded Abraham.

The aristocratic--if not haughty--Roderick was nevertheless consistently in the Top 1000, reaching as high as Number 221 in 1967, when it was not uncommon to run into a Rod or a Roddy. It's at a low point right now, but we can envision it being revived as a neglected, dignified grandpa name, perhaps when Rod is no longer a potentially embarrassing nickname..

A fresher spin on Jaxon, with built-in cool nickname Nix, and a great way to honor an ancestral Nick. But the association with disgraced former president Richard Nixon remains strong, which might explain why this otherwise bang-on-trend surname name has remained under the radar, peaking at #482 in 2017.

The iconic Gone With the Wind star Clark's surname was brought into the first-name mix when Weeds' Kevin Nealon picked it for his son. Gable makes a strong and unusual possibility, a rhyming cousin to Abel and Mabel.

This early Scottish title -- known to us via Shakespeare's Macbeth -- has recently surfaced as a baby name possibility, familiar sounding through its similarity to names like Zane and Wayne.

This name of a character played by Kirsten Dunst in the movie Virgin Suicides, originally a novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, is gaining attention, also thanks to the heroine Lux, Lady of Luminosity in the League of Legends games. Luz is the Spanish version.

Super-sweet name that was the title of a Broadway play -- but best known as a type of apple. The Dutch variation is Pepijn is finding some popularity in that country, where short nickname names are stylish.