The most popular baby names of the 1910s are also perfect for modern babies

Posted in Baby Names.
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You might think that names plucked from over 100 years ago would be stuffy and outdated, (and some are!) but a deeper dive into the most popular names of the 1910s also reveals a truckload of brilliant names that will be just as appropriate for modern bubs!

Name your baby like an Edwardian

While the list – gleaned from the US Department of Social Security archives – has its fair share of traditional names, many are the kind that translate perfectly across eras.

Elizabeth, Anna, Alice and Rose are choices you would expect to see penned in fancy cursive at the top of someone’s afternoon correspondence. But other names you may not have predicted were top of the pops in the 1910s too. Goldie, Fern, Stella and Opal are names you might expect to encounter in the offspring of a chic Instamummy account. The mums of the Edwardian era thought they were pretty ace too!

When it comes to baby boys’ names, it was more of what you’d expect with the still lovely, super-royal William, George, Charles, Harry and Louis topping the charts. There were other vintage names, such as Otis, Felix, Mike and Max that are as popular at your local play centre as they were back when boys wore knickerbockers and the occasional frock .

Baby in shorts and bowtie standing on road - feature

They were kind of a big deal last century

The other thing that was interesting is the number of babies with names we consider quite niche now. Take Goldie, for instance. Around 8,500 baby girls received this cute name during the 1910s. There were almost 5,000 Augusts in the baby boy names for the same period.

Of course, in the scheme of things and during a ten year period, it’s not a huge amount, but they still ranked in the top 200 names for each gender so they were kind of a big deal last century.

“The 200 most popular names were taken from a universe that includes 6,948,478 male births and 8,509,896 female births,” the list points out, so it’s kind of a coup to be top of a list of millions, right?!

Some not quite so niche, and more familiar, solid names made the very top spots with almost 380,000 Johns and almost 400,000 Marys. William came in at around 303,000 while Helen was the next most popular name for girls of the 1910s with 248,000.

Here’s our pick of the best names of this era – all these names made the top 200 for their gender (and are perfectly lovely choices for modern kiddos!)

Girls’ names

  1. Elizabeth
  2. Anna
  3. Frances
  4. Alice
  5. Florence
  6. Rose
  7. Lillian
  8. Ruby
  9. Grace
  10. Hazel
  11. Clara
  12. Elsie
  13. Ida
  14. Pearl
  15. Viola
  16. Stella
  17. Alma
  18. Ella
  19. Charlotte
  20. Mae
  21. Opal
  22. Hattie
  23. Sophie
  24. Sara
  25. Cora
  26. Audrey
  27. Daisy
  28. Sadie
  29. Flora
  30. Lottie
  31. Irma
  32. Della
  33. Adeline
  34. Fern
  35. Goldie

Baby girl on tummy in cute beanie

 

Boys’ names

  1. William
  2. George
  3. Joseph
  4. Charles
  5. Henry
  6. Louis
  7. Harry
  8. Jack
  9. Earl
  10. Joe
  11. Leo
  12. Edwin
  13. Leroy
  14. Clyde
  15. Sam
  16. Charlie
  17. Ray
  18. Lewis
  19. Jesse
  20. Leon
  21. Oscar
  22. Max
  23. Oliver
  24. Mike
  25. Nelson
  26. August
  27. Julian
  28. Jerome
  29. Otis
  30. Emil
  31. Otto
  32. Isaac
  33. Felix
  34. Ellis

Some surprisingly contemporary picks in there, no? Or are we just choosing a lot of vintage-inspired names that we think are modern?!

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