Agatha, Abe and Ambrose: the 100-year-old baby names making a comeback

Choosing a baby name is a tricky business.

Too popular and you risk little Lily being one of five on the pre-school register.

Too ‘unique’ and you might just end up driving your little one to change their name by deed poll.

So how do parents-to-be tread the tricky line between common and crazy? By taking some inspiration from eras gone by.

The recycling of old-fashioned baby names isn’t anything new. Edie, Ava, and Arthur are all classic examples of vintage names that have had a surge in popularity in recent years. But, there are plenty more monikers that haven’t yet been rediscovered.

Baby naming website Nameberry has revealed a list of names that were popular 100 years ago and are now on the cusp of making a comeback.

The monikers all featured within the top 500 most popular back in 1918 but which haven’t featured in any of the top 1,000 names in recent decades.

While the most common names during 1918 were John, Mary, James, Dorothy, Robert and Margaret, the list reveals a selection of lesser-known monikers that are ripe for revival.

For girls, names include the traditional Agatha, Bessie, Etta, Ida, Lorna, Muriel, Rosalind, Polly and Opal. As well as more out-there options such as Augusta, Dixie, Minerva and Odessa.

Meanwhile, boys’ names such as Ambrose, Abe, Ned, Wallace, Roscoe and Rufus made the list.

For those parents looking for a more classic moniker for their baby boys Edmund, Barney, Ollie, Archie and Dale might fit the bill.

In a craze for ‘so old-fashioned they’re trendy names’ parents could also opt to call their baby girls Beryl, Gertie, Olga or Sibyl.

While baby boys could rock a granddad-chic moniker like Cecil, Dudley, Benedict or Norris.

The name of Holly Willoughby’s second son, Chester made the list, while Blake Lively and Ryan Reynold’s baby name Ines was also a suggestion, although it was spelt with a ‘z’ rather than an ‘s’.

The release of the list follows news that certain names made popular in years gone by have actually joined the endangered baby names list.

The monikers, which were once common on school registers, including Karen, Ian and Clive, have fallen out of favour with parents in recent years.

So much so that unless parents-to-be start re-picking the names for their offspring they actually risk becoming extinct, which seems kinda sad no?

According to parenting site BabyCentre mums and dads are side-stepping baby names made popular in the 1980s like Cilla, Edna and Ricky in favour of some more out-there monikers inspired by celebrities.

That means that names that were previously considered ‘trendy’ haven’t been registered on the site’s database at all in recent years.

This follows on from the site’s previous list of names that could soon become extinct after dropping off the radars of new parents.

The most popular baby names from 1918

Girls:

Agatha

Alpha

Althea

Augusta

Avis

Bernadette

Beryl

Bessie

Birdie

Carmella

Cleo

Delia

Dixie

Effie

Etta

Fay

Geneva

Gertie

Ida

Inez

Ione

Iva

Lelia

Loretta

Lorna

Lottie

Louella

Lucinda

Lula

Lulu

Mamie

Maude

Merle

Minerva

Minnie

Muriel

Myrtle

Odessa

Olga

Opal

Pauline

Philomena

Polly

Rosalind

Rosella

Roxie

Sibyl

Theda

Winifred

Yolanda

Boys:

Abe

Alphonse

Ambrose

Archie

Barney

Benedict

Booker

Burl

Cecil

Chester

Claude

Clement

Cleveland

Cornelius

Dale

Dewey

Dorsey

Doyle

Dudley

Edmund

Ferdinand

Floyd

Forest

Garland

Grover

Hiram

Homer

Isadore

Kermit

Lemuel

Lowell

Lucius

Luther

Ned

Noble

Norris

Ollie

Perry

Pete

Roscoe

Rufus

Sol

Stuart

Thaddeus

Ulysses

Vito

Waldo

Wallace

Ward

Wiley

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