6 Distinctive Vintage Baby Names for Each of the Past 7 Generations

Some baby names are perennially popular: Think James for boys or Sarah for girls, which have seen high levels of use since the beginning of record-keeping. Other names, however, are more evocative of a specific era and can sometimes give strong clues about the person’s year of birth. Women named Linda were most likely born in 1947, while odds are good that any tween boy you run into these days will have a name that ends in n.

Calculating the most popular vintage baby names in a year or years can be accomplished by perusing the Social Security Administration’s baby name database. However, if you want to find out the old-fashioned baby girls' and baby boys' names that are most distinctive to an era, looking at the absolute most popular names will not be enough to reveal those really generation-specific names like Maude or Elmer.

To do this, I developed a measure of generational distinctiveness. This is calculated by dividing how often a name appears per sex within a generation, as defined within the Strauss-Howe generational theory, and dividing how often it appears per sex throughout the entire period from 1883 to 2015. (These generational divisions differ slightly from the Pew Research Center’s definitions here.) The higher the score, the more generationally distinctive a name is. Below are the top three most distinctive vintage baby names for girls and boys of every generation based on this measure.

1. The Lost Generation // 1883-1900

Members of this generation were defined by coming of age during World War I and the 1920s. Gertrude Stein used the term in a conversation with Ernest Hemingway (“you are all a lost generation”). It was originally used to describe Hemingway and other writers of that era including F. Scott Fitzgerald and e e cummings.

The popularity of Maude is usually attributed to the 1855 poem “Maud” by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Effie, a diminutive for Euphemia, was likely inspired by Effie Gray, who was at the center of a publicized Victorian love triangle. Minnie (short for Wilhelmina) was more popular still in the 1880s, but stayed in use for longer, making it less distinctive to the Lost Generation. The most Shakespearean of names—William—was the no. 2 name for baby boys until 1909. However, its shortened form of Will was unique to the Lost Generation. Harry peaked in 1889 at no. 8 for boys and had a steady but not rapid decline in subsequent decades. In a similar fashion, Charlie piggy-backed off Charles, which was the no. 5 name for boys but stuck around for longer than the diminutive form.

2. The G.I. Generation // 1901-1924

Members of this generation, also called the Greatest Generation, came of age during the Great Depression and World War II.

Gertrude is the quintessential late 1800s and early 1900s old-fashioned baby girl name, used both in popular fiction and by well-known socialites. Mildred was the more popular overall, staying at no. 6 from 1912 to 1920, but remained in use for longer after the end of the generation than Gertrude did. Also from literature (specifically Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night), Viola was big in the early 1900s before sharply retreating. Looney Tunes character Elmer Fudd premiered in 1940, and odds are he’d be in his 40s by then if he was real, as the name peaked in the late 1800s but kept being given to boys into the early 1900s. Chester stayed in the top 50 most popular baby boys names throughout the 20th century’s first two decades, likely buoyed by the presidency of Chester A. Arthur. Clarence peaked in 1901 at no. 17 for boys and stayed in the top 30 for the whole generation, so was more popular than Elmer or Chester but didn’t decline as rapidly in subsequent decades.

3. The Silent Generation // 1925-1942

Members of this generation are defined by the post-World War II McCarthyist period. Silent is a reference to “working within the system” and not wanting to disturb the social order. The Silent Generation was coined in a TIME magazine essay in 1951.

Few American-born girls are named Dolores today, but in the 1920s, the name became synonymous with beauty and glamour, first with model Kathleen Rose (stage name Dolores) and then with Mexican actress Dolores del Río. Like Dolores, Betty also peaked in 1930 but was much more popular overall that year at no. 2. However, Betty stuck around longer, making it less distinctive to the era. Joan peaked in 1932, likely driven by the success of actress Joan Crawford. Gene (short for Eugene) never truly broke out but was consistently around no. 70 for boys names for the entire generation. Billy did break out in 1930 likely due to the release of film Billy the Kid. Child actor Norman Chaney’s short movie career peaked around the time that the name Norman reached the height of its popularity.

4. Baby Boomers // 1943-1960

Members of this generation were born in the “baby boom” years when the U.S. birth rate grew rapidly after World War II.

Inspired by a Buddy Clark song of the same name, Linda may well be the trendiest baby name of all time, and it was an immensely popular baby girls' name for Baby Boomers. Judy—a diminutive of Judith—peaked and dipped around the same time as Linda, but was not as popular overall. Gail, short for Abigail, peaked in 1951. For boys, Gary peaked at no. 9 in 1954 after a decade or so of Oscar wins by actor Gary Cooper. Larry and Dennis attained their maximum popularity a few years prior to that.

5. Generation X // 1961-1981

Members of this generation get their name from the 1991 novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland. A 2014 Pew Research report referred to Generation X as “America’s neglected 'middle child” due to its position between the much larger Baby Boomer and Millennial generations.

Todd and Scott are two of the earliest popular examples of the use of what were once exclusively last names as first names. Chad peaked in 1972 as the no. 25 most popular baby boy name, and the vast majority of Chads were born during Generation X. Same with girls named Tammy, Tracy, and Tonya.

6. Millennials // 1982-2004

Members of this generation, also called Generation Y, are often the children of Baby Boomers, and have overtaken them as the largest population group. The name was popularized by the book Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation by Neil Howe. The Strauss-Howe generational theory positions the cutoff year for this generation at 2004, while the more widely accepted Pew Research Center’s definition of the Millennial generation is from 1982 to 1996.

Mom.com’s Laura Wattenberg has pointed out that we have seen an increase in alternate spellings of names, but not necessarily an increase in names in recent years. Kelsea and Chelsea are examples of this. Brittany peaked as the third most popular girl’s name in 1989, and just about all the Brittanys are Millennials. Cody and Kyle are also first names that were originally last names. Zachary peaked as the 12th most popular vintage baby boy name in 1994 and probably owes its increased popularity to celebrities Robin Williams and John Denver, who picked this name for their kids starting in the early 1980s.

7. Homeland Generation // 2005-present

According to the Strauss-Howe generational theory, babies being born today would be counted as members of this generation. Homeland was picked as the name for the post-Millennial generation in a website contest hosted by Neil Howe and refers to the post-9/11 American political climate. This definition hasn’t exactly caught on in popular culture; the much more frequently used term for this cohort is Generation Z, which the Pew Research Center defines as people born between 1997 and 2012. The Strauss-Howe theory also doesn’t include the youngest generation, Generation Alpha, which Pew defines as spanning the 2010s to today.

Baby boy names that rhyme with Aidan are a popular subset of the larger trend of popular boys’ names ending in n. This is evidenced by the top three boys names. Nevaeh is the word heaven spelled backwards and was popularized by musician Sonny Sandoval naming his daughter that in 2000. Zoey is a phonetic variant of the Greek name Zoe, which was popularized through use in several TV shows. Addison’s popularity stems from its rhyming with Madison, which became popular as a girl’s name after the movie Splash featured a mermaid that picked it as her own. It also continues the trend of last names becoming first names. In a nod to the Lost Generation, Madison’s original meaning is “son of Maud.”

Source and Methodology: The source is the Social Security Administration’s baby names database and includes births through 2015 (most recent available when this article was originally published). For this analysis, no births before 1883 were included. Name totals were grouped by sex for all names (two groups), as well as by sex within each of the seven most recent Strauss-Howe generations (14 sub-groups). These totals were then used to calculate the total incidence within each sex as well as the incidence within each sex by generation. Generational distinctiveness was calculated by dividing incidence by sex and generation by total incidence by sex. To ensure a level of relative popularity, the minimum threshold for a name’s inclusion in a sub-group is that it has to comprise at least .25 percent of total births within that sub-group.

A version of this article was published in 2015; it has been updated for 2024.

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