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HelpRe: A little rant on old-fashioned names "coming back" (m)
in reply to a message by Somebody random
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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