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

187 names, uncommon — 100 to 499 a year, in United States

Very Rare Rare Uncommon

Girls Boys Unisex

Nell Nell is a girl's name that reached its modern form through a medieval habit of mishearing, from "mine Ellen" run together.
Girl English 128 in 2025
Arlene Arlene has no established origin at all — it appears in the nineteenth century with no traceable parent name, and the Irish pledge reading usually given for it belongs to a different name entirely.
Girl American 127 in 2025
Lester Lester means from Leicester, and the spelling is the honest one — Leicester has been pronounced LES-ter for centuries, so the surname simply wrote down what people had actually been saying to each other all along.
Boy English 103 in 2025
Woodrow Peaked in 1918 · 39,634 births since 1900
Boy 102 in 2025
Myron Myron means myrrh, and the resin was worth its weight in gold — traded up the incense routes from southern Arabia, used for embalming, and one of the three gifts in Matthew.
Boy Greek 102 in 2025
Maribel Peaked in 1980 · 25,421 births since 1906
Girl 125 in 2025
Kent Kent is the oldest recorded place name in England — Cantium appears in Greek writing before the Roman invasion, and its meaning was already uncertain to the Romans who wrote it down.
Boy English 101 in 2025
Geneva Geneva is not named after the Swiss city — it is a form of Genevieve, whose own meaning is unsettled, and the city's name comes from a Celtic word for a bend or estuary entirely separately.
Girl English 125 in 2025
Ervin Peaked in 1921 · 39,948 births since 1880
Boy 101 in 2025
Stacy Stacy comes from Eustace or Anastasia, two unrelated names, and its meanings are correspondingly different — fruitful or resurrection.
Unisex Greek 140 in 2025
Lois Lois is a girl's name that appears once in the New Testament, in a letter naming Timothy's grandmother, and its meaning has never been established.
Girl Greek 124 in 2025
Adrienne Adrienne means from Hadria, an Italian town that also named the Adriatic Sea — so the name and the sea are both called after a small settlement whose own name is uncertain.
Girl French 123 in 2025
Denise Denise is a girl's name, the French feminine of Denis, and like it traces to Dionysus, the Greek god of wine.
Girl French 123 in 2025
Alannah Alannah is a girl's name from the Irish term of endearment a leanbh, meaning "O child," so it began as something said to a baby rather than something anyone was called.
Girl Irish 123 in 2025
Marielle Peaked in 1964 · 22,221 births since 1900
Girl Dutch 121 in 2025
Leticia Leticia means joy, and Napoleon's mother carried it — Letizia Ramolino outlived her son and was styled Madame Mère de l'Empereur, a title created for her alone.
Girl Spanish 120 in 2025
Kristina Kristina means a follower of Christ, the Scandinavian and Slavic form of Christina.
Girl Scandinavian 118 in 2025
Lori Lori is a girl's name, a short form of Laura meaning laurel.
Girl Latin 118 in 2025
Lucinda Lucinda was invented by Cervantes — the name appears in Don Quixote in 1605 and has no record before it, which makes it one of the few names on this site with a datable author.
Girl Spanish 116 in 2025
Rosemarie Rosemarie looks like Rose plus Marie, and as a name it is — but the herb rosemary has nothing to do with either, and the resemblance is one of the neatest coincidences in naming.
Girl German 115 in 2025
Maryann Maryann joins two names whose own meanings are unsettled — Mary has never been securely derived from the Hebrew, and Ann means grace, so only half of the compound has a firm reading.
Girl English 114 in 2025
Tess Tess is a girl's name of Greek origin, a short form of Theresa whose meaning has never been established despite centuries of attempts.
Girl English 113 in 2025
Belinda Belinda is a literary invention with a snake in it — the Germanic element behind it is usually read as a serpent, and Pope's Rape of the Lock made the name fashionable in 1712.
Girl English 110 in 2025
Josette Josette is the only faded name in this group — it peaked in France at 6,650 births in 1946 and now ranks nowhere in France at all, surviving only in the United States at 1837th.
Girl French 109 in 2025
Darlene Darlene is a girl's name built from the English word darling, and it is one of a small group of American twentieth-century coinages that used the -ene ending.
Girl English 108 in 2025
Lonnie Lonnie shortens Alonzo and Alphonso, meaning noble and ready — and the Germanic original reached Spain with the Visigoths, so a name that reads as American South is Gothic by descent.
Boy Spanish 109 in 2025
Vivien Peaked in 1986 · 18,383 births since 1900
Unisex French 108 in 2025
Francine Francine means Frenchwoman, and it is a French diminutive of a name that already means French — so it reads as a small French person, which is circular in a way few names manage.
Girl French 108 in 2025
Pippa Pippa is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "lover of horses."
Girl Greek 107 in 2025
Judy Judy is a girl's name, the pet form of Judith, from a Hebrew word meaning a woman of Judea.
Girl Hebrew 105 in 2025
Margarita Margarita means pearl, and it names both a cocktail and a pizza — the pizza for Queen Margherita of Italy, the drink by a route nobody has ever settled.
Girl Spanish 104 in 2025
Meghan Meghan means pearl, through Megan and Margaret, and the h is an American addition — Welsh spells it Megan, and the extra letter appeared in twentieth-century American use with no basis in the original.
Girl Welsh 102 in 2025
Susie Susie means lily, shortened from Susan, and the Hebrew word was borrowed from Egyptian — where it may have named a lotus rather than a lily, which changes the flower entirely.
Girl English 101 in 2025
Cindy Cindy is a girl's name, a pet form of Cynthia, which was a title of the moon goddess Artemis.
Girl Greek 100 in 2025
Lula Lula has no single parent — it shortens Louise, Lucille and Tallulah alike, and our data marks it reviving, ranking 1306th in England and Wales against 1938th in the United States.
Girl English 100 in 2025
Sonya Sonya means wisdom, and the Greek word behind it named a divine attribute before it named a person — Constantinople's great church was dedicated to Holy Wisdom, not to any saint called Sophia.
Girl Russian 100 in 2025
Kristen Kristen is a girl's name meaning a follower of Christ, and in Denmark it is a man's name — the Danish Kristen is masculine and Kirsten the feminine.
Girl Danish 106 in 2025
Marion Marion is a French diminutive of Mary that has crossed sexes twice over — it is 81 percent female in our records, yet its most famous bearer was John Wayne, born Marion Robert Morrison.
Unisex French 147 in 2025
Kari Kari descends from the same unexplained Greek root as Kaitlin in this group, but by a Scandinavian route — through Karen and Katarina rather than through Irish, and the pure gloss is equally unproven on both paths.
Girl Scandinavian 113 in 2025
Tracy Tracy is a Norman place name that became a surname, then a boys' name, then overwhelmingly a girls' name — about 81 percent of the births in our records are female.
Unisex Norman 114 in 2025
Jackie Jackie is the third most evenly divided name on this site — 48.9 percent of the births in our records are female, behind only Emerson and Riley among names with more than 50,000 births.
Unisex English 148 in 2025
Johnnie Johnnie means God is gracious, a pet form of John.
Unisex Scottish 103 in 2025
Bennie Bennie means son of the right hand, and Jacob renamed the child to get there — his dying mother called him son of my sorrow, and his father would not let the name stand.
Unisex Hebrew 114 in 2025

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

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