Vintage Names

Names that were everywhere a century ago and then were not. The reliable pattern is the hundred-year rule: a name usually has to feel like a great-grandparent rather than a grandparent before it can come back, because the generation in between still hears it as merely old.

Rankings for

14,402 names, most popular first in United States

Very Rare Rare Uncommon

Girls Boys Unisex

Sandrine Sandrine is a girl's name meaning defender of men, a French diminutive of Sandra.
French 243,469 births
Virginie Virginie does not mean maiden.
French 173,498 births
Claudine Claudine is a French girl's name meaning lame, from a Roman family name.
French 170,774 births
Raymonde Raymonde is the French feminine of Raymond, meaning protecting counsel.
French 164,932 births
Vicki Vicki means victory, shortened from Victoria — and Victoria was a rare name in Britain before the queen, not a traditional one she happened to carry.
English 155,049 births
Laetitia Laetitia means joy, and it is the Latin original standing behind the far more common Letitia and Lettice.
French 144,722 births
Ginette Ginette is a French diminutive of Geneviève, a name whose meaning is not settled.
French 132,372 births
Annick Annick is the Breton form of Anne, meaning grace, and the -ick ending is a Breton diminutive rather than a French one.
Breton 132,124 births
Henriette Henriette means home ruler, and the home in question is an estate rather than a house — the Germanic element meant an enclosure or domain, so the name describes holding territory, not housekeeping.
French 128,291 births
Marthe Marthe means the lady, and it is one of very few widely used names that came into European use from Aramaic rather than Hebrew, Greek or Latin.
French 123,291 births
Micheline Micheline is the French feminine of Michel, and the name underneath is a question — Michael means who is like God, expecting the answer nobody.
French 113,160 births
Vickie Vickie is an American name that now charts only in France — it peaked at 6,957 US births in 1956 and has left the American rankings entirely, surviving at 6405th in a market it was never native to.
English 111,330 births
Simonne Simonne means she has heard, and the Hebrew is a verb about listening rather than a description — Leah names her son in Genesis saying that God has heard she was unloved.
French 106,149 births
Fabienne Fabienne is the French feminine of Fabien, meaning bean grower, and it peaked in France at 6,850 births in 1965 before leaving every ranking we track — it charts in none of the six markets now.
French 105,993 births
Pascale Pascale means Passover, not Easter — the Hebrew pesach came into Greek and Latin unchanged, and Christian use attached it to a different festival that happened to fall at the same point in the calendar.
French 104,744 births
Severine Severine means stern, from a Roman family name — and the emperor who carried it died at York in 211, which is the furthest north any Roman emperor ever got and the reason the name reached Britain at all.
French 95,444 births
Odile Odile means wealth, from a Germanic word for inherited property — and her saint was born blind, abandoned for it, and became patron of Alsace and of people with poor eyesight.
French 94,576 births
Maryse Maryse is a French elaboration of Marie, so it inherits a meaning nobody can establish — Mary's derivation has never been settled, and the star of the sea reading is a medieval mistranslation.
French 92,522 births
Huguette Huguette means mind or spirit, from a Germanic word — and the Huguenots take their name from the same root by a disputed route, though the connection is argued rather than established.
French 90,172 births
Marie-Thérèse Marie-Thérèse joins a name nobody can translate to another nobody can translate — Marie descends from Miriam and Thérèse from a Greek original, and neither derivation has ever been established.
French 89,388 births
Fernande Fernande is the French feminine of Ferdinand, meaning bold journey, and it is one of two faded names in this group — it peaked at 3,140 French births in 1920 and now ranks nowhere at all.
French 85,546 births
Pierrette Pierrette means little stone, and the name records a nickname Jesus gave — Simon was renamed Cephas in Aramaic, rendered as Petros in Greek to keep the pun on rock intact.
French 82,160 births
Marie-Christine Marie-Christine joins a name nobody can translate to one that is a title — Marie descends from Miriam, whose meaning is unrecovered, and Christine from Christos, the anointed one.
French 76,221 births
Berthe Berthe means bright, and Charlemagne's mother carried it — Bertrada of Laon, known as Berthe au Grand Pied, is the reason the name runs through Frankish royalty at all.
French 70,955 births
Gayle Gayle carries 67,694 lifetime births and now charts in none of our six markets — one of the largest names on this site to have fallen entirely out of current use.
English 67,716 births
Ghislaine Ghislaine means a pledge, and the pledge was a person — the Germanic word named a hostage handed over as security for a treaty, which is how the name entered European royalty.
French 64,537 births
Régine Régine means queen, and it completes a set — Rex is the Latin nominative, Regis the genitive, Régine the feminine, and all three are large enough to hold their own page on this site.
French 64,525 births
Gilberte Gilberte means bright pledge, and the pledge in it is the same word as in Ghislaine — the Germanic gisil named a hostage handed over as security for a treaty, and both names are on this site.
French 62,346 births
Ernestine Ernestine is the feminine of the same Germanic word as Earnest in this group — eornost, the vigor of a fight.
French 59,749 births
Marie-Claude Marie-Claude joins two names whose meanings pull in opposite directions — Marie's own sense has never been settled, while Claude's is uncomfortably plain, descending from the Latin for lame.
French 58,495 births
Yolande Yolande has no settled origin, and the violet reading most sources give is a guess — it may be a French reshaping of the Italian Violante, or a Germanic name reworked to look like one.
French 55,374 births
Frédérique Frédérique means peaceful ruler, and the pairing is not the contradiction it looks — a medieval ruler's job was to impose the peace, so power and quiet were the same undertaking.
French 55,027 births
Marie-France Marie-France peaked in 1948, three years after the Liberation, and its second half is the country itself — one of very few given names anywhere that takes a nation as an element.
French 54,486 births
Sylviane Sylviane means of the forest, and Rome had a god for exactly that — Silvanus presided over woodland and field boundaries, and Rhea Silvia, mother of Romulus and Remus, carries the same root.
French 53,090 births
Mauricette Mauricette means little dark one, and the root is an ethnic label — Maurus meant a Moor, a North African, so the name records complexion as Romans classified it rather than as a description.
French 52,760 births
Traci Traci is the most narrowly recorded name in this sweep — every one of its 52,406 births is American, it charts in no market in the current year, and its entire history runs from 1945 to a 1970 peak and down.
English 52,435 births
Marie-Louise Marie-Louise means famous in battle on one side and nothing certain on the other — Louise is a solid Germanic compound, while Marie descends from a name that has never been securely translated.
French 49,216 births
Nadege Nadege means hope, and it belongs to a set of three — Russian tradition names girls Vera, Nadezhda and Lyubov for faith, hope and love, and Vera is written up separately on this site.
French 49,061 births
Shelia Shelia is Cecilia with two letters swapped and four languages in between — Cecilia became the Irish Síle, Síle was written Sheila in English, and Sheila was misspelled into Shelia often enough to become its own name.
Irish 47,946 births
Carine Carine set the largest peak in this group — 4,230 French births in 1973 — and now charts in one market on five, which is about as complete a collapse as our records show.
French 46,893 births
Paule Paule means small, and the apostle chose it — Saul of Tarsus took the Roman cognomen Paulus, a word meaning little, in place of a name that meant asked for.
French 46,364 births
Emilienne Emilienne descends from a Roman family name nobody can translate — Aemilius is usually given as rival, from aemulus, but that is a resemblance rather than a derivation.
French 45,358 births
Ludivine Ludivine may have been invented for television — the name has almost no record before a French series used it in the 1970s, and its rise begins immediately afterward.
French 42,149 births
Rolande Rolande means famous land, and the man behind it died in a skirmish that became an epic — Roland fell at Roncevaux against Basques, and the Song of Roland turned them into a Saracen army.
French 40,372 births
Marie-Hélène Peaked in 1959 · 38,522 births since 1900
French 38,522 births
Murielle Peaked in 1964 · 38,306 births since 1920
38,306 births
Maryline Peaked in 1959 · 37,830 births since 1941
37,830 births
Marie-Claire Peaked in 1954 · 36,535 births since 1900
36,535 births

Or Browse by Decade

A style is our reading of a name. A decade is the register — the names children were actually given, in order, with the counts.

Search Names

Vintage Names

Or Browse by Decade

Related Styles