Today
Gone, baby, gone: These 14 baby names are on the brink of extinction
By Allison Slater Tate
July 25, 2017
Don’t tell Bette Midler or Willard Scott, but they don’t have many namesakes out there. According to BabyCenter, theirs are among 14 names that were once popular in the United States and now belong to not one of the 200,000 American babies currently registered on their site. BabyCenter also identified names that aren’t yet endangered but are losing popularity fast.
For those parents-to-be who don’t want their children to have to share their names with anyone else in their kindergarten classrooms, these names might make good choices: it’s unlikely that there will be another Olga or Rudolph in the cafeteria line anytime soon, apparently.
Baby Lowell is now almost 4 years old, and his mom said she thinks people are missing out by not using his beautiful name.
Though each of these 14 names were popular at some point in the last century and graced everyone from Ancient Greek writers to U.S. Presidents and movie stars, BabyCenter said they are now nowhere to be found on their site:
Girls
1. Bette/Bettie
2. Blanche
3. Erma/Irma
4. Krista
5. Myrtle
6. Olga
7. Rhonda
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Boys
1. Carroll
2. Dick
3. Homer
4. Lowell
5. Roosevelt
6. Rudolph
7. Willard
What about Kathryn???
According to the Social Security Administration, Kathryn went from being the 89th most popular female baby name in 2000, to being the 398th most popular female baby name in 2016. The name has lost ground every year, for the past 16 years. In 2000 there were 3,641 births named Kathryn, to 829 in 2016. You can plug in your own name, with the following link: https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/babyname.cgi. My name went from rank #203, to rank #426 from 2000 to 2016. Mister D, it looks like your name went from #217 to #488 from 2000 to 2016. Almost the same–then again, our names rhyme! Here’s a name that’s never been in the Top 1000, since 1900–Poindexter!
LOL Thanks for the info!
There are heaps of Kathryns in Australia.