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A lot of people on this and other names sites seem to throw around the term "classic names" without defining it very clearly. I thought that perhaps one way to define a "classic name" would be a name which has always been at least moderately in use for the entire 125 years that the Social Security site has year-by-year data. So I looked at the top 300 girls' names of 2004 and saw which ones of them have never been out of the top 300 in the last 125 years. Here is the list; since it's from the SSA data, every different spelling is considered a separate name, and as you can see 3 different spellings of Katherine and 2 of Sarah meet this definition of "classic". They are listed in order of their lowest ranking ever, and the year that lowest rank is found is in parentheses:

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Elizabeth 26 (1945)

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Mary 63 (2004)

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Katherine 105 (1938)

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Anna 106 (1971)

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Catherine 106 (2003)

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Sarah 119 (1959)

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Kathryn 122 (2004)

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Laura 129 (2004)

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Margaret 133 (2004)

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Julia 143 (1977)

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Maria 168 (1899)

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Sara 184 (1958)

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Rebecca 185 (1926)

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Rachel 202 (1951)

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Victoria 269 (1936)

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Emily 274 (1962)

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Evelyn 289 (1977)

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There were also nine "near misses", names now in the top 300 that have never been less popular than #400 on the SSA list:

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Charlotte 311 (1982)

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Caroline 329 (1956)

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Lydia 334 (1975)

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Amy 356 (1928)

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Eva 362 (1997)

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Miriam 376 (1969)

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Nina 376 (1978)

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Claudia 380 (1929)

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Grace 390 (1974)

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Can you think of a better way to empirically define what is "classic"? Do any of the above names surprise you? I think many people will be surprised that Evelyn has been so consistently popular; that's probably because what seems to be maintaining its popularity recently is the fact that Hispanics are now fond of it.

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