Where Have All the Carols, Janets, Nancys, and Barbaras gone?

Last Sunday’s Parade Magazine listed the 10 most popular U.S. baby names for 2007. Heading the list were Jacob and Emily. A branch of linguistics that’s always intrigued me is onomastics—the study of the origins and forms of proper names. Maybe it’s because I’ve had issues with my own first name, Barbara. My parents (more likely my mother) chose it for me in 1940 because they liked it, not because it was a relative’s name or for any specific reason.

In those days they sure weren’t alone in their choice, because I grew up in a multiple-Barbara world. (Other Babsies might want to visit “our” website, The Barbara Page). Parade used the website “Popular Baby Names” (click here to view it) for their information. It’s operated by the Social Security Administration and ranks the 1,000 most common boys’ and girls’ names since 1900. They should know because these days every newborn is assigned a social security number, whereas we got ours around age 14+ when we needed a work permit for our first job.

On the Baby Names site you can look up specific names and track their status over time. Barbara was the 3^rd most popular name for girls for two decades, the 1930s and 1940s. By the 1960s, it had slipped to 6^th (despite the introduction of Barbie dolls in 1959), and by 2007, it had dropped like a rock to 633rd place!

At least I wasn’t a ba-ba-bá-ba-Barbara Ann (remember the Beach Boy’s version of that annoying song in 1965?). My middle name is Ellen after my maternal grandmother (only in 74th place in 1940). In 1965, a month after I got married, changed my last name, and moved to Cambridge, Mass. where my new husband was in graduate school, I got a job with Harvard psychology professor Jerome Bruner. He had the chutzpah to ask me to change my first name because he already had another Barbara working for him—and there were two more Barbaras in the same research group anyway. So I suddenly went from being Barbara Sweeney to being Ellen Plakans. What an identity crisis that was! For those two years when I worked at the Center for Cognitive Studies, I was forever getting confused. If someone down the hall called out “Barb!” invariably my head whipped around.

During the past 4-1/2 years, my daughter Brenda (34^th in 1967) and her husband Jim (4^th that year) have needed to choose names for their two sons. I was surprised to discover that the fashion in naming these days is to look for monikers original and offbeat. This is the case with baby boys as well as girls, although boys’ names have usually tended to be more conventional. After running a frequency count of first names in the North Allegheny Class of 1958, I soon concluded that was not the urge driving our parents.

Most Popular Names among the Class of 1958

Let me show you my table. First I looked back to 1940 to see how many American kids were given our names and compared it with how many class members had those names. Even though we had 91 males (to 84 females) in our class of 175, the range of boys’ names was a little narrower (46 names) to girls’ names (49). That also confirms the onomastists’ observation that parents are more likely to be inventive when choosing a name for a baby girl than a baby boy (though for our parents, not very).

MALE Names

NAHS rank	Name	No. of cases	U.S. Popularity in 1940
1st	ROBERT	8	2nd
2nd	JOHN	7	3rd
2nd	WILLIAM	7	4th
3rd	THOMAS	4	8th
3rd	RONALD	4	10th
3rd	GEORGE	4	11th
4th	RICHARD	3	5th
4th	CHARLES	3	6th

For all other names there were only 1 or 2 cases

FEMALE Names

NAHS rank	Name	No. of cases	U.S. Popularity in 1940
1st	CAROL	5	6th
1st	JANET	5	19th
2nd	BARBARA	4	2nd
2nd	NANCY	4	7th
2nd	SUSAN	4	36th
3rd	PATRICIA	3	3rd
3rd	MARILYN	3	25th
3rd	JEAN	3	29th
3rd	KATHY	3	40th
3rd	EMILY	3	164th

For all other names there were only 1 or 2 cases

The only really popular boys’ names not represented in our class were James (1^st in U.S. popularity in 1940) and Donald (9^th); we had one David (7^th) and two Josephs (12^th). Among the girls’ names, we had two Marys (1^st in U.S. popularity)—if we include Mary Ann, two Judys (4^th), a Betty (5^th), a Linda (8^th), a Shirley (9^th), but no Sandra (10^th). Still we can think of lots of friends and siblings with those names at NAHS in the classes surrounding ours.

What interested me more was the scarcity of unusual or offbeat names. A few occurred when boys were named for their fathers (Ernest, Merritt, and Bowman). Actually our Bowman (usually called “Bo”) had the first name of “Arthur.” Both of our Arthurs, were named for fathers, went by their middle names. The other was Arthur was usually “Pete” Brandt, except to the teachers, such as his aunt Mrs. Letzkus.

I’m don’t know about the origins of Justin or Vaughn. Actually “Justin” has risen in popularity and resided among the top 25 boys’ names from 1993 to 2003. In some places, Regis (we had 2, but it’s not on the chart) might seem exotic, but is there a Pittsburgher of our generation who didn’t listen to local radio phenomenon Rege Cordic? He was part of our morning routine.

The real outlier was Klaus, our foreign exchange student from Germany. I suspect his name might have been on the German baby list though, if one exists. Germany (as well as France and Scandinavia) have lists of approved first names. A baby must be given an approved name, or the child will not be legally recognized—so no Apples, Dakotas. or Jadens.

Can anyone think of an unusual name among the distaff side of our class? Winifred and Mildred were a trifle old-fashioned. The Babses may be history, but not the Emilys, a name that has been #1 for girls for 10 years and is still going strong. Others showing strength currently include Grace (20th), and of course Mary that "grand ole name" that held onto #1 for 46 years until it was supplanted for 6 years by Linda, fought its way back for another 9, then succumbed to the powerhouse of Lisa.

Perhaps we of the Silent Generation pre-dated the era of adventurous naming. According to an article by Peggy Orenstein The New York Times Magazine (7/6/03), “in the 20^th century, John, William, James, and Robert were, in some combination, the top three names for boys for more than 50 years.” Michael (we had 2) remains a perennial (2^nd place 2007).

This week I’m off to Wisconsin to catch up on my two grandsons—to the left, Eamonn, 3-3/4 years (off the chart for at least 50 years), and to the right Alexander, 8 months (11th in 2007). Eamonn’s spelling and pronunciation put him among the offbeat. Although Pat (3^rd place 1940) Henke Sexauer tells me she, too, has a grandson named Eamonn—thanks to his father and her son-in-law being really Irish.

Please let me know if I’ve miscounted or forgotten anyone.