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HelpA little rant on old-fashioned names "coming back" (m)
in reply to a message by Billina
I’ve seen people recently talking about how Irma, Edith, and other old-fashioned names are "coming back into style", but are people aware of the current trends?
Emma and Evelyn have come back into vogue, yes, but not because they’re old-fashioned - that might be a secondary reason, but not the main one.
The main reason they became popular is because they had very trendy attributes: Emma was soft, simple, and feminine, while Evelyn had the much-wanted "lyn" ending and "Eva-" was a soft and trendy sound (as A Masked Man has said before).
Because these names are considered old-fashioned, many people here have assumed that other old names will follow suit - but this isn’t quite true. Mabel will come into fashion because it’s soft and feminine and has the popular "bel" ending. Names like Edna, Edith, Ethel, and Irma will not, because they have nothing to them that’s trending right now.
The only dated names that I could see coming back are Ida, because of the sound, and MAYBE Winifred or Dorothy, because of the Winnie/Freddie and Dodie nicknames.
You might say "Well, Edith and Edna have the Edie nickname."
Yes, they do, but they’re too old-fashioned for most parents. There is a limit that most parents will not pass because certain names feel too dated to use. Mabel, Ida, Winifred and Dorothy are old-fashioned, but not TOO old-fashioned for modern parents’s tastes.
Did any of that make sense? I feel like I’m just rambling, but I also felt like I had to say something about the popular assumption that "all old-fashioned names will come back". Yes, some will, but not all of them.
Emma and Evelyn have come back into vogue, yes, but not because they’re old-fashioned - that might be a secondary reason, but not the main one.
The main reason they became popular is because they had very trendy attributes: Emma was soft, simple, and feminine, while Evelyn had the much-wanted "lyn" ending and "Eva-" was a soft and trendy sound (as A Masked Man has said before).
Because these names are considered old-fashioned, many people here have assumed that other old names will follow suit - but this isn’t quite true. Mabel will come into fashion because it’s soft and feminine and has the popular "bel" ending. Names like Edna, Edith, Ethel, and Irma will not, because they have nothing to them that’s trending right now.
The only dated names that I could see coming back are Ida, because of the sound, and MAYBE Winifred or Dorothy, because of the Winnie/Freddie and Dodie nicknames.
You might say "Well, Edith and Edna have the Edie nickname."
Yes, they do, but they’re too old-fashioned for most parents. There is a limit that most parents will not pass because certain names feel too dated to use. Mabel, Ida, Winifred and Dorothy are old-fashioned, but not TOO old-fashioned for modern parents’s tastes.
Did any of that make sense? I feel like I’m just rambling, but I also felt like I had to say something about the popular assumption that "all old-fashioned names will come back". Yes, some will, but not all of them.
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Replies
It's very common for (female) names to come back into popular use after about 80 years. Certainly not all will, but the reincarnation of names in fashion is an observable phenomenon. The trends aren't separate from that pattern. Isabella was dowdy in the 90s, but the 2000s were ready for it because all of the sounds sounded fresh and were being lifted by the trends. Why were the trends lifting names like Isabella? In large part because such sounds had been buried for a good while, and the culture was ready for them again.
You'll be quite surprised in ten years I think. Irma's not going to get insanely popular I don't think, but people will lose a lot of knee-jerk resistance to it. People who are "ahead of the curve" and contratian are beginning to reach for those sounds that are old enough that they're novel again, and we'll begin to these super old fashioned names popping up in the British BAs. People will use them because they're appealing to them but not to everyone - but they'll be appealing to a wider audience soon enough, and they'll be grumpy about how they named their kids Irma, Mildred, Myrtle, etc BEFORE everyone else was doing it. These sounds are going to stop sounding harsh and start sounding soft and welcoming, and their frumpiness will be a "refreshing" unpretentiousness and humility in comparison to flashy Isabella and Olivia.
Check out this graph.
https://www.behindthename.com/name/bella/top/united-states/f?compare=myrtle%20isabella%20hazel&type=rank
edit: You're correct about Mabel I think - it has a lot of trendy aspects of it. It would be considered really dowdy just a decade or so ago, but the culture is ripe for it now. Hipsters have been using it for a while, though. I think Mable's mumbly consonant pattern is a harbinger of the type of fashion that is to come before long.
You'll be quite surprised in ten years I think. Irma's not going to get insanely popular I don't think, but people will lose a lot of knee-jerk resistance to it. People who are "ahead of the curve" and contratian are beginning to reach for those sounds that are old enough that they're novel again, and we'll begin to these super old fashioned names popping up in the British BAs. People will use them because they're appealing to them but not to everyone - but they'll be appealing to a wider audience soon enough, and they'll be grumpy about how they named their kids Irma, Mildred, Myrtle, etc BEFORE everyone else was doing it. These sounds are going to stop sounding harsh and start sounding soft and welcoming, and their frumpiness will be a "refreshing" unpretentiousness and humility in comparison to flashy Isabella and Olivia.
Check out this graph.
https://www.behindthename.com/name/bella/top/united-states/f?compare=myrtle%20isabella%20hazel&type=rank
edit: You're correct about Mabel I think - it has a lot of trendy aspects of it. It would be considered really dowdy just a decade or so ago, but the culture is ripe for it now. Hipsters have been using it for a while, though. I think Mable's mumbly consonant pattern is a harbinger of the type of fashion that is to come before long.
This message was edited 8/12/2020, 4:13 PM
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A lot of things (fashion, music, design) go from being dated to charmingly retro /old-fashioned, I think it applies to names as well. I spend a lot of time in a French-speaking area and see toddlers boys with names like Basile, Léonce and Clément , which until a few years ago would have been considered incredibly old-mannish.
Isn’t there the theory names come back once the generation beating them originally has died out?
Isn’t there the theory names come back once the generation beating them originally has died out?
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Do you attribute Hazel coming back solely to "The Fault in Our Stars"?
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I didn't know (or forgot) that there was a Hazel in The Fault in Our Stars, so I assumed Hazel coming back was partly because of the popularity of witchy aesthetics? I recently watched a video about people trying to capitalize on that "witchy aesthetic" thing by interviewing real witches but making the whole thing into clickbait. There's also the whole cottagecore thing which overlaps with the witchy thing and I's expect both to influence the popularity of Hazel.
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Yeah, cottagecore’s getting pretty popular.
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I’ve never read the book and I don’t know how popular it is, so I don’t really have an answer to that.
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Are you only talking about the US? Because Edith is already “back” in the UK, it’s in the top 100 now.
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Yes, I’m only talking about the U.S. From what I’ve known, name trends in the U.S. and U.K. are rather different.
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In some ways they're different, but there's a clear correspondence of names getting big in the UK and then getting big in the US 5-10 years later.
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"...there's a clear correspondence of names getting big in the UK and then getting big in the US 5-10 years later."
Or vice versa as in the case of Edith and maybe Florence, which were popular in the US and then caught on in Britain. The usage of some names like Alice and Evelyn don't seem to have been inspired by another countries use; it seems more related to old fashioned names making a comeback.
With names like Sophia, I think the US trend may have been more inspired by Italy and widespread trends, and Camila is more due to Spanish influence.
Or vice versa as in the case of Edith and maybe Florence, which were popular in the US and then caught on in Britain. The usage of some names like Alice and Evelyn don't seem to have been inspired by another countries use; it seems more related to old fashioned names making a comeback.
With names like Sophia, I think the US trend may have been more inspired by Italy and widespread trends, and Camila is more due to Spanish influence.
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