Popular girl's baby name now virtually extinct as it disappears from the charts
A once popular girl's baby name is no longer the top choice for parents, according to new research which shows the name has completely dropped off of the yearly charts that list the names parents are loving the most.
In recent years, fewer people have chosen to name their newborn babies Stephanie, despite it once being a popular name among Millennials and Gen X. According to baby name expert Sophie Kihm, names tend to follow a "100-year rule" when it comes to how fashionable they are, meaning that any names that are deemed "uncool" by today's standards probably won't return to the popularity lists in our lifetimes.
Sophie, an expert at Nameberry, shared: "Names tend to go out of fashion after they've been stylish for a while. Often, it can be measured in generations. Names tied to parents' parents' generation (the grandparents of the baby) are usually considered to be among the least fashionable choices one could use for a baby, like Brenda and Gary today.
"Once a name is on the decline, we expect it to follow the 100-year rule – names take about 100 years to come back into fashion. That means names of the great-grandparent generation are starting to sound fresh again. Sorry to be morbid, but a big influence is that there just aren't that many people with these names around anymore."
Other once-popular girls' names that have fallen out of favour recently include Ellen and Ashley, as they're more common among the "older generations". According to Sophie "girl names were historically more ornamental, and thus more susceptible to trends" whilst for boys, a name is "historically passed down family names" meaning "the classics have remained relatively stable."
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She said: "Names like James, Thomas, Henry, George, William, and Alexander have never left the top 30 in England and Wales. They still cycle up and down in usage, but these traditional (often royal) names feel evergreen because of tradition."
In July, BabyCentre shared their updated research on the most popular baby names of 2023 so far, where Stephanie did not appear in the top 100 names for girls. The most popular girl's name so far this year was Lily, with the top five finished off by Sophia, Olivia, Amelia, and Freya. For boys, the top five was Muhammad, Noah, Theo, Leo, and Oliver.
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