The names that came back

In 1920, one American girl in every 69 was called Mildred. It was the sixth most popular girls' name in the country, given to 18,058 babies that year. Evelyn was twelfth, one girl in 90.

A hundred years on, Evelyn is the eighth most popular girls' name in America. Mildred was given to 83 babies in 2017 and has not been in the top thousand since 1984.

Two names, side by side at the top of the chart in 1920. One came back and one did not. The first article on this blog was about the names that disappeared. This one is about the ones that made the return trip, and it turns out to be a short list.

Evelyn and Mildred

Here are both names, every year from 1920 to 2025. The line is where each ranked among American girls that year, so the top of the chart is number one and the bottom is number 1,000.

For sixty years they fall together. Mildred is slightly ahead in 1920 and slightly behind by 1930, and from then on the two lines go down the page side by side, a few places apart. In 1975 Evelyn is 281st and Mildred is 612th. That is not yet a different story. That is the same story, one of them a bit further along.

Then in 1977 Evelyn stops falling. It bottoms out at 289th and turns round. By 2000 it is 150th, by 2008 it is 54th, and in 2017 it re-enters the top ten. Mildred keeps going. It is 943rd in 1980 and in 1985 it is gone.

We would like to tell you why. We cannot. Mildred was the more popular name in 1920, and nothing in the numbers between 1920 and 1976 marks one of them out as the one that would come back. If you had been looking at this chart in 1976 you would not have picked Evelyn.

Nine out of sixty-five

Evelyn is not the only name to make the trip, so we counted them. There are 65 names in our catalogue whose best year for American babies fell between 1920 and 1929, counting only the ones that reached at least 3,000 babies in that year. Of those 65, nine are back in the American top 100 today.

Read the middle column. The lowest points cluster between 1977 and 1989, which is roughly fifty to seventy years after the peak. Six of the nine turned round in that window, and Henry, which we will come to, hardly fell at all. Alice and Arthur were late. Alice did not bottom out until 2002 and Arthur until 2006, which is why they sit lower on the list. They are still on the way up. Arthur was 292nd in 2015 and is 87th now, 205 places in ten years.

Eleanor made the longest round trip. 25th in 1920, 695th in 1986, 12th today. Nobody choosing Eleanor in 1986 was following a trend. Nobody choosing it now is doing anything else.

Henry barely left. It was 17th in 1920 and never fell below 146th, which it touched in 1994. Henry was given to 11,412 American babies in 1921 and no year since has beaten that in our counts, which stop in 2017. It was 18th that year with 10,417 babies. It is 5th now, so it has very probably passed 1921 by this point. We do not have the number, so we are not going to claim it.

And one of the nine is already on the way back down. Lillian was the first to return. It was 29th in 2008 and 26th in 2015, and it is 57th today. A revival can be over before the others have started.

The other fifty-six

Nine came back to the top 100. Seven more are in the top 200, among them Mary at 125th, which was the number one girls' name in America every year of the 1920s. Twenty-two are somewhere in the top thousand. And 27 of the 65 are not in the top thousand at all.

Those 27 include Mildred, Doris, Gladys, Thelma, Bernice, Marjorie and Lois. Doris was eighth in 1925 and went to 16,571 babies in 1928. In 2017 it went to 92. Thelma went to 7,840 babies in 1921 and 26 in 2017. On the boys' side, Howard, Ralph, Fred, Norman, Herbert, Clarence and Earl have all gone.

Harold is about to join them. Here it is against Henry. Harold was the more popular of the two in 1920, twelfth against seventeenth, and 14,153 babies got it in 1924.

Same shape as the girls. Together for fifty years, then one turns and one does not. Harold is 993rd in 2025. It was 809th in 2015. One more decade like the last one and it leaves the chart.

Britain brought back the boys

We hold the Office for National Statistics figures for England and Wales beside the American ones, so we can ask the same question here. Of the same 65 names, thirteen are in the England and Wales top 100 for 2025. That is more than America managed, and it is a different thirteen.

Nine of the thirteen are boys' names. In America, three of the nine were. The American revival is mostly girls: Evelyn, Eleanor, Lillian, Ruby, Alice, Vivian. The British one is mostly boys. Arthur is fifth in England and Wales, given to 3,211 babies last year, and 87th in America. George is seventh here and 126th there. Albert is 57th here and 614th there. Alfred is 76th here and 840th there.

Ralph is the one that made us check twice. It is 96th in England and Wales, 541 babies, and it is not in the American top thousand at all. 184 American babies were named Ralph in 2017, in a country with six times our births.

It cuts the other way too. Lillian is 57th in America and 361st here, 119 babies. Vivian is 72nd there and was given to fewer than fifty babies here, which is below the line where we are willing to quote a British ranking.

The names that died, though, died in both countries. Mildred went to five babies in England and Wales last year. Doris six, Gladys four, Bernice four, Thelma ten. Whatever it is that sends a name into the ground, it does not stop at the coast.

Who is next

Dorothy was the second most popular girls' name in America in both 1920 and 1925, one girl in 33 in 1921, and 39,997 babies got it in 1924. In 2017, 498 did. But look at the last ten years. It was 714th in 2015 and it is 421st in 2025, up in nine of those ten years. In England and Wales it is already 199th, with 253 babies.

June was 864th in America in 2008 and is 150th now. Lucille was 994th in 1973 and is 239th. Neither is in the top 100 yet. Both are pointing at it.

So the honest summary is this. Of the names that had their moment in the 1920s, about one in seven has come all the way back, and they turned round fifty to seventy years after their peak. Nothing we can see in the numbers says in advance which ones. Mildred outranked Evelyn and Harold outranked Henry. If you are choosing between two names from a hundred years ago and want to know which one is about to be everywhere, we cannot tell you. We can tell you the last lot took about sixty years to decide.