[name_f]Miriam[/name_f] is rather lovely, however most of these names aren’t quite granny to me yet. The people I know with these names are 30-50, so not ready for revival yet!
Usually the names come back into style after around 100 years. The names that are popular now are names of our grandparents or great-grandparents, people in their 70s or older.
The names you’ve listed will probably start coming back in minimum about 20 years. It may take as long as 40 years.
It’s because those names are our parents’ names, so people naming kids today can’t picture their parent’s name on a baby. The next generation of namers, though, will see their own names and their parents names as too overdone/old-fashioned/what have you, and they’ll think their grandparents and great-grandparents’ names sound fresh and lovely.
It’s [name_f]Dawn[/name_f] that I keep coming back round to (not to use - just thinking about it), it fits so well with the current nature/word names, but is still an outcast. PP is right - it is because it is the name of maybe a 40-50 year old and just not due yet.
I think [name_f]Mabel[/name_f] is well on its way with [name_m]Bruce[/name_m] [name_m]Willis[/name_m] recently choosing it. [name_u]Evelyn[/name_u] is the name chosen by my friend who is due in two weeks
Is there a name bank between the two sets that I am missing I wonder? Younger than [name_f]Pearl[/name_f] and [name_f]Edith[/name_f] but older than [name_f]Sue[/name_f] and [name_f]Linda[/name_f]?
I know three little Evelyns so its already on it’s way back.
Looking at the rankings of names over the past 150 years gives you a good idea. Using [name_u]Evelyn[/name_u], for example, it was ranked #27 last year. The last time it was that high was in about 1934. So about 80 years. (although, interestingly, it doesn’t look like it ever actually fell out of use. It never falls further than the 200s in those 80 years.
[name_f]Charlotte[/name_f] is at spot 19 for last year. That’s the highest it’s ranked as far as the SSA’s data shows. It was spot #45 in 2010, and before that, it’s highest spot was #47 in 1943, so about 67 years before it reached (almost) the same popularity.
Other names are hard to forsee when they’ll come back. [name_f]Pamela[/name_f], for example, was #10 in 1953, which was it’s biggest rank, so theoretically using the ~70 years rule we could see it as early as 2020. But it fell and then briefly rose in the 80s, which could delay it’s return by another 30 years.
Around the time when I’m having kids in about 10 years or so these will be popular again. I think [name_f]Miriam[/name_f], [name_f]Dawn[/name_f] and [name_f]Valerie[/name_f] have good potential to be popular.
