[name]Hi[/name]. I am thinking of names that despite being excessively popular in whichever generation, were not used in my family while they were current. You know how you know 5 or 6 of someone and you think what a common name - and yet nobody took that name in your whole wide family, as far back as you can remember and as far ahead as you can see?
I probably can’t think of every popular name we DIDN’T USE - just a few of the glaring omissions! [name]Do[/name] you have any generational examples to share?
Here are mine - I am not going back very far - I think this includes 5 (possibly 6 on the old side) generations that I do know including the one after me (I have no children myself) including as many cousins and their children, and my parents’ cousins, and as many extended people of my grandparents’ generation and any spouses I can list off in my head – unscientific but pretty thorough:
Boys and Men - We have [name]Zero[/name] Quantity:
[name]Michael[/name]
[name]Paul[/name]
[name]Thomas[/name]
[name]Daniel[/name]
[name]Steven[/name] or [name]Stephen[/name]
[name]David[/name]
[name]Henry[/name]
[name]Jason[/name]
[name]George[/name]
[name]Connor[/name]
[name]Jeffrey[/name]
[name]Andrew[/name]
[name]Kevin[/name]
[name]Mark[/name]
[name]Jacob[/name]
[name]Brandon[/name]
Girls and Women - We have [name]Zero[/name] Quantity of:
[name]Jennifer[/name]
[name]Linda[/name]
[name]Lisa[/name]
[name]Ann[/name], [name]Anne[/name], or [name]Anna[/name] - not even for a middle or in combo as a longer name.
[name]Barbara[/name]
[name]Margaret[/name] - or any variant
[name]Sarah[/name]
[name]Jane[/name] - or any variant (unless [name]Jean[/name] counts)
[name]Carol[/name]
[name]Ashley[/name]
[name]Kimberly[/name]
[name]Amanda[/name]
[name]Rachel[/name]
[name]Amy[/name]
[name]Nicole[/name]
[name]Alice[/name], [name]Allison[/name], [name]Alicia[/name], etc.
[name]Zero[/name] Quantities of Either:
No one in my family has a name that starts with [name]Alex[/name] or is derived from [name]Alexander[/name] or [name]Alexandra[/name].
I guess that’s it. I was just thinking in another thread how I don’t have a cousin [name]Steve[/name] but I went to school with dozens of them. I don’t really have the biggest family though - it’s not tiny but most had 4 children or less. With bigger families, I think some of these listed would have been snatched up eventually. A handful of names are repeated throughout the family, on either side, while most of the common/popular names are used once (so far). Uncommon or unpopular names are also somewhat rare in my family. When [name]Katelyn[/name] was born, she was probably the first in the whole U.S.! I’m only sort of joking - she was born in the early 1980s, so really one of the first wave.