I recently bumped into another archaic photo from the family collection. It’s from sometime in the 1920s, and the attractive woman shepherding her kids is my great-grandmother, Nellie Berg, in Norman, Minnesota. It’s kind of awesome because I remember her in the 1970s, when she was the first in our family to get a color TV, and I discovered that she was a fanatic about roller derby.
One thing that jumped out at me were the names, which sounded familiar and normal to me, but are distinctly old-fashioned and not that common anymore. I like them, they have good associations, but I haven’t seen these appear in my student lists in quite a while.
That’s Nellie in the back. The child on the left is my grandmother, Nora. Next to her is Claude, and then Muriel, and Arlene in front. The father of that brood was named Clarence.
There’s nothing wrong with those names, I’m just interested in how whenever I look back on the family tree, I see so many names that are totally out of style nowadays. All you Nellies, Clarences, Noras, Claudes, and Muriels, speak up in the comments and let me know that the good ol’ names haven’t totally faded away.
Also, I should mention that all of these names came from families with purely Swedish and Norwegian ancestry. I’d be curious to know how these markers changed in various other cultural groups.
My dad, born in 1912, was named Clarence, which he hated, but not as much as his first name, Lot. He went by Clair his whole life (though as a kid, he was called Red, for obvious reasons). (But mostly, he was known as Dr. Armin, with a Ph.D. in Biology). His mother was Nell.
One of my classmates growing up was named Nora, and her identical twin was named Cora.
My partner is named Blanche, which she never liked, but appreciates now for it’s uniqueness. She was named for her grandmother (surprise!).
My ancestry is English and German, by and large. Incidentally, my parents children are named (in order of birth): Sally, Andrea, Richard, Susan, Jill and Bruce (though I changed my name in my early 20’s). You can recognized the generationality of those names too.
Everything old is new again. I spent most of my life (certainly my entire childhood) being the only person with my name. Now it’s suddenly a popular baby name (for the last 5-10 years). Kind of the way no one named their kid Millie until Stranger Things suddenly made that name trendy and popular.
Huh; Clarence and Claude have opposite gender in French (at least, in Quebec).
I wouldn’t be surprised by any of those names on a 20-something today. I recently worked with a young Murielle.
I can think of Nellie McKay and Nora Jones in popular culture. Definitely not early-20th century people.
My mom was Geneva. Her mom was Matty Lou, and her dad Cary, which was a recurring family name. Cary was born sometime in the 1880s, officially 1888, although they weren’t certain about that.
My dad’s mom was Ida and his father…no kidding…Christopher Columbus plus his family name. CC, as he was known, wanted to name dad the same and call him Junior but my grandmother hated nicknames. So they compromised on Christopher Clark where “Clark” was her family name.
I asked my mom if my name, which is no where else in the family tree, came from a certain movie actor turned president of the US in the 80s, and she said no way. I think the name may have come from the other Ronald movie actor…Ronald Coleman…but she wouldn’t admit to it.
Those names sound like typical for the US (and likely other Anglophone countries) at the time–no matter the ethnic heritage. And as I believe most folks know, these days some of those old-fashioned names are coming back into fashion.
My parents were born in the 1930s and their parents were born around 1900.
My mom’s parents were Martin and Flora and her Norwegian-born grandpa was Haakon.
My dad’s parents were Helga and Herbert (Herb’s middle name was Dewey and being born in 1898 I assume that was a popular-ish name at the time due to Admiral Dewey’s naval victory in The Phillipines).
I had a great-grandmother from the Pacific Northwest named Nellie, who named her children Gwen, Clyde, and Len in the first decade of the 20th c. Wait, this isn’t some data-scraping operation, is it? What’s your cut in this, PZ?
On my dad’s side, my great grandmother’s name was Doris (she was of Irish extraction). We have a lot of Johns on that side of the family, too. My grandmother’s name was Dycie, and her sister’s name was Dorothy. (I have no idea what the nationality was there. Grandma would be so annoyed.)
On my mom’s side, my grandmother’s name was Virginia. She went by Virg, and her she was not fond of her middle name, Dorothy. My grandpa was first generation Finnish-American, Arthur Toivo. He was always Grandpa Art to us.
On my dad’s side, my great grandmother’s name was Doris (she was of Irish extraction). We have a lot of Johns on that side of the family, too. My grandmother’s name was Dycie, and her sister’s name was Dorothy. (I have no idea what the nationality was there. Grandma would be so annoyed.)
On my mom’s side, my grandmother’s name was Virginia. She went by Virg, and her she was not fond of her middle name, Dorothy. My grandpa was first generation Finnish-American, Arthur Toivo. He was always Grandpa Art to us.
It would be so helpful if you would include your last name, your socioeconomic status, and your social security number.
Huh. No idea how that got double posted.
Perhaps the weirdest names were just initials. That was fairly common in the South when I was growing up. Both my dad and his dad were known as “CC”, but they had names behind those. However, I had two cousins with just initials…HB and WH…and an uncle JL. When JL joined the Navy he was required to put a full name to the initials so he became “John”.
Looking at the family tree info on the Internet, it’s always striking how many of my grandfather Cary’s children died before they were 3. That was mostly in the late teens and early 20s. Of the 7 children by his first wife only one of them survived until I was around…Aunt Madge. His oldest daughter, Hilda, lived long enough to get married but died shortly after at 19 in 1931. I don’t find any cause of death but childbirth would be a possibility.
Funny thing about thinking names are unusual. I had a guy in my game group about 7 years who was either in his late twenties or younger 30s name Richard and he was insistent that among his generation is was an uncommon name. When we responded “no, it’s maybe not as common as it has been in the past it was still in the top 150 and absolutely no-one anyone would blink or think it unusual to meet a Richard” he went on to insist that he went by “Rich” and not the more common Rick or Dick. It was really rather odd that he was insistent upon it.
Mary has had on interesting dip that might be similar to what Rich was thinking about. It was the most popular #1 girls name for 150 years until the mid 80s when it dropped to 2 or 3. I think now it is the 150th or something fairly low. But still high enough to expect to meet someone with the name (at the suppermarket or bank) every other day.
PZ @ 9 — How about a bank account or credit card number while we’re at it? Given that my socioeconomic status is well reflected by where I live…Marin County, California…I think you can surmise the potential value of those numbers to you.
Among my male ancestors and older relatives Karl and Heinrich were pretty common name. Few younger Germans are called Heinrich these days but some versions from other languages (Henry, Henri, Henrik…) seem to be much more fashionable.
My grandmother’s name was Hortense, a name I’ve never encountered elsewhere in person. Likewise my great aunt Imo. I only just this minute realized my mother’s first and middle names were both colors that describe different shades of the same color group. I wonder what my grandparents were thinking?
My parents names together sound like they should’ve been running a NY Jewish deli rather than a midwestern farm.
The most surreal thing for me though was meeting someone whose first name is my surname, which while not super rare, is fairly uncommon. Certainly much less so as a first name, unlike names like Parker or Mackenzie or Taylor.
My paternal family has an Emmeline and a Lemuel in almost every generation from 1790 to 1890, after which David takes over. My dad never liked his given name, so after his Uncle David died in the early 1980s he changed his name to David to keep up the tradition. He never told Grandma, probably because she was the only one left who never called him by his nickname.
There’s no-one in my generation named David, unfortunately, and I don’t think any of my distant cousins have kids named David. Our surname dies out in the current generation too, unless one of the girls persuades a future husband to take her name or a bastard second cousin turns up.
I’ve been doing some family research and have found some interesting links with names unintentionally repeating over the generations. For instance, my son’s name is Anthony. I’ve found 7 members of the extended family with our same surname all named Anthony. I’ve never met any of them. My brother’s name, Frank also shows up a half dozen times in the family tree.
On the other hand, I have two male ancestors who were named Emberson and two named Marion. But, except for one uncle whose middle name was Emberson, it seems to have died out, (thankfully, my mother wanted to give me that name but my dad vetoed it). Likewise, Marion seems to have ended up in the trash heap of boys names as well.
@15 One of the parental units had a sister named Irmegaard. Somehow, I don’t think that particular name is going to make a resurgence in popularity anytime soon. There were also relatives named Gertrude and Ethyl, likewise unlikely as popular girl’s names any time soon. (I associate the latter name with carbon bonds rather than people.)
Grandma was named Rita (born early 20s). Aunts Reba, Grace and Hazel (late 30s, early 40s). Mom is Judith (Judy).
Someone mentioned Mary which is common in my family. My cousin (my generation) is Marylisa (one word).
Was Nellie your great-grandmother’s official first name, PZ? I had an aunt Nellie, but the name on her birth certificate was Ellen (almost Nellie reversed, I notice). Two of her brothers were Leslie (official first name Cyril) and Jack (official first name Albert). Further back on the same side of the family, though, there was a lot less creativity: almost all the men seem to have been John, George, Samuel or Matthew, and the women Mary, Martha or Elizabeth.
Swedish names often reflect different generations. Women called Birgitta, Christina or Margareta were often born in the 1950s, since the current king’s sisters were called that. Anyone called Kevin or Kent probably had parents who were influenced by the large numbers of American airmen who ended up being interned in Sweden during the war (there’s actually an association of people called Kevin or Kent which has annual meetings!). Some names fall out of fashion altogether (like Ottilia, the female version of Otto) … but then come back again. My daughters’ great-grandmother was called Ottilia and I mentioned to a teacher once how names disappear and she told me she had three Ottilias in her class! Right now, Noah is the most popular boy’s name and Alma the most popular girl’s name. At least Gunlög hasn’t made a comeback (yet!).
My great-grandfather’s name was Adolf. When I knew him, he was pretty crotchety, and he died when I was a teenager. He had good reason to be crotchety. He was born in Germany but emigrated to England as a teenager, became a shopkeeper and married a kindly Englishwoman Amelia (my great-grandmother who I also knew) and they had two kids Otto and Lillian (my grandmother). Then WW1 happened. Adolf was sent to a concentration camp on the Isle of Man for the duration of the war just for being born German. They lost the shop which was vandalized to the point of destruction. Adolf was very bitter about the English for the rest of his life. After the war, they first considered emigrating to Germany but decided it would be better to come to Cleveland. Otto found an excellent job there working in automobile manufacturing, and Lillian married James, an Irish-American engineer, and they had many kids including my mother, and Adolf and Amelia retired to a little cottage behind my grandparents’ house.
Anyway, for some reason there aren’t too many kids named Adolf anymore.
Some other names from my family tree that seem to have fallen from current usage:
Armilda
LuDella
Lavinia
Melvina
Solomon
Parminis
Pleasant
Lucinda
And this is just going back 2 to 4 generations. Going back even further, I have a puritan ancestor whose name was either Thankslord or Thankyelord. I’ve seen both spellings.
As a student I asked my footballing pal why everyone called him Henry. “It’s my name” he replied and walked off. Felt a bit foolish.
Her name seems to have actually been Nellie. She had a sister named Nettie, so it might have been a parallelism.
Another unusual name fading away, this time on my father’s side: Carilda. That was my grandmother’s name, also my aunt’s (she was Carilda Mae, which I think was a Scots-Irish thing) and is my sister’s middle name. Unfortunately, no one has passed it on into the next generation.
My father, born on a farm in 1918 in the Missouri Ozarks, was named Orville and his siblings were Opal, Orpha, Chester and Jack (I suspect the last one was a nickname of some sort). My mom called him Bud. Speaking of my mom, she was a Phyllis who went by Phyl. Her siblings were Lucy (named after their mom), Arthur (named after their dad, who was Australian), Catherine and Josephine. They were all born in Salt Lake City but were not Mormon.
OK, maybe a plain old English thing. There are lot of Myerses with roots in the North, around Yorkshire.
Nelly Furtado comes to mind. Clarence Thomas. Jean-Claude Van Damme.
There was a character named Muriel in the last Good Omens adaptation; she’s an angel though—wiki says age 6000+ (Immortal)—an angel from an apocryphal text. Archangel Uriel gets more attention. I felt like there ought to be a recent famous Muriel… Oh, Muriel Bowser!
We have “antique names” in the Black American community. Rosetta, my grandmother’s name, is definitely one of them. You don’t see that anymore particularly with the younger generations.
On a related note, I have a hobby of looking up Black supercentenarians (aged at least 110 years old). I can often pick them out of lists featuring supercentenarians globally where only the name and nationality are listed with no further details and no photographs are shown.
fergl @24
Perhaps is was his current name, and there was a reluctance to change.
My ancestors go back to 1630 in Tidewater Virginia and Anne Arundel Co., MD. Before that mostly from England. They spread westward, always on the frontier.
Here’s a sample from my genealogy database. Some are simply not heard today.
Jackson, Atha, Ina, Maxine, Hazel, Nettie, Minnie, Luther, Lula, Opal, Dallas, Franklin, Adeline, Sophronia, Amasa, Rowena, Jemima, Elisha, Darius, Marcellus, Dempsey.
redwood @ 26
My dad’s family is from the Ozarks (I was born in Dixon, MO). My mom’s family is from SE Kentucky. When people ask about heritage, I usually say 100% hillbilly, before mentioning the German Irish and English. : )
My Grandparents names on my Mother’s side were Wilbur and Florence. Don’t see those name anymore.
We named our kids Zephren and Caelan so they would be different, not super common like ours (Chris and Lisa) but I go by my middle name, Giles
my dad’s a milford. his mom was doris, his aunts were phyllis and virginia. of the four names i’ve only ever encountered one other phyllis.
I have some lovely new friends who happen to be sisters.
Their names aren’t entirely conventional or anachronistic.
Having said that…,”Emma.”
Cyborg @33
Um, the young but well-known actress Florence Pugh might have something to say about that. Not to mention Florence Welch of Florence and The Machine.
My parents : Baden and Elsie
My Dad’s parents: Kenneth and Melba
My Wife’s parents: Stanley and Mavis
Though, on my dad’s side, my grandfather was Kenneth John Charles, my dad was Kenneth Baden Henry (KA Baden) and my oldest brother is Kenneth Barry Stephen (KA Barry). I kept up the tradition giving my eldest the first name Kenneth, but she ditched that when she transitioned.
Emma is increasingly common! I’ve seen multiple Emma’s in classes.
Florence became a common name when Florence Nightingale became well known; her parents named their daughters after where each was born (Parthenope and Florence). It was a top 10 name in the late 1800s, early 1900s in the US (Social Security website). It dropped out of the top 1000 in 1982 but popped back in in 2017 and now sits at 435.
Nellie seems to follow the same trajectory as Florence though not as popular (top 50 rather than top 10 but dropped out of the top 1000 in 1980 and back on in 2019). Nora has been in the top 30 for the last few years. Muriel dropped off the top 1000 in 1965 and had peak popularity in the 1920s when it was about 120 on the list. Arlene was most common in the 1930s and dropped off the list in 2005. Claude dropped off the list in 1994 and its peak is in 1901 at 58th position. Clarence was in top 20 at the beginning of the 1900s but dropped off the list in 2011.
For my own ancestors and relatives the names Josiah and Joseph get repeated a lot. Do have several Gertrudes in previous generations including one who became a medical doctor in 1911. Unusual names include Euclid, Boetius, Richenda, Camilla Hildegarde, And then I have an ancestor called ‘John Smith’; admittedly I’m not completely sure that was the name he was born with.
My family is loaded with old-fashioned names. My maternal grandmother’s name was Doris. She had 4 older sisters: Myrtle, Elsie, Louise, and Catherine. Doris was married to my grandfather, Herschel. My mother’s name was Linda. My father’s name is Bruce. His mother’s name was Bertha and his father was Frank. Some other family names off the top of my head are Craig, Melvin, Marian, Wells, Walter, Oscar, Palmer, and Tubner.
Oh and Emma has been top 5 in the US since 2002; top 2 since 2012. A lot more students still to come.
@ Lauren Walker : I had an Aunty Doris* – and she wa s(unhappily sadly) married to my Uncle Max. Also had an Uncle Stan – short for Stanley – too as well and although we all called my Grandpa Jack; I believe his actual official name was Earnest – another name that seems to have pretty much disappeared despite it apparently being important according to a certain O Wilde. Come to think of it, Oscar isn’t too common these days – aside from Piastri. My Mum is named Barbara which also doesn’t seem to be a very common name now though it once was. Oh and Grandma’s first name was Joy and also still have an Aunty Gay too. (She isn’t.FWIW.)
As an erstwhile SF and fantasy / horror / other writer I do enjoy coming up with different names and thougfh I havern’t seen them used by anyone yet I would recommend some plant species as people names, eg Themeda Triandra (native local grass) and Thelymitra ( Sun Orchids) and Acrotriche pronounced “Akro trikey” as possibilities..
Ofc, some names go in and out of fashion for inscrutable reasons whilst others are associated with certain negative people or slang terms eg Ricard becoems Dick which explains why that’s not popular and there’s a very obvs reason why very few people get named Adolf these days – likewise I suspect in future very few people will be named Donald.
What’s in a name? A whole lot of different associations and cultural baggage and symbolism and subjective judgements and family history and more..
. * Plot twist through real life, if memory serves, Doris’es offiicial formal first name was actually Dorcas, a name I’ve only otherwise encountered in one of the characters in Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land.‘ Thinking fictional characters & their old fashioned names – and from far worse books that blogger Slacktivist brilliantly deconstructed there’s also the old name Hatty who was a character in “The Worst Books in the World” the Left Behind series by Christianist preachers LaHaye & Jenkins.
Come to think of it a name when used as a cultural or ethnic group identifier can be literally a matter of life or death if what I read years ago in perhaps a book on, I think it was Lebanon’s civil war (Robert Fisk? Pity The Nation?) or maybe an article / book on post American invasion troubles in Iraq (?) where militiias were literally stopping people at checkpoints and then killing those with certain names (Omar?) that were typical of either Shia or Sunni or maybe Maronite background and group indentity.
Oh and thinking fiction – novel (?) I think as well as classic Aussie movie – there’s the Muriel “Your terrible Muriel!”” in Muriel’s Wedding – from back inthe mid 1990’s. See :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muriel%27s_Wedding
Though I don’t recall meeting anyone esp anyone young with that name.