Names that disappeared

What counts as gone

The Social Security Administration withholds any name given to fewer than five babies in a year, so a name never formally ends — it simply stops appearing. That censoring is what makes this list possible and also what makes it approximate: a name below the line might still be given to one or two children a year, and would look identical in the data to one nobody has chosen since the Truman administration.

The cut used here is deliberate and arguable: first recorded before 1950, nothing after 1990, at least 500 births in total. Loosening any of the three lengthens the list considerably. The 1980s ended more of these names than any other decade — 251 of them.

Most vanished quietly, for no reason anyone recorded. GAY did not. It was given to 19,367 American babies, peaked as late as 1959, and stopped in 1982 — the word acquired a second meaning and parents stopped choosing it. It is the clearest case in this data of a name being retired by the language rather than by fashion.