If you wear them, you are on the verge of extinction: First names that were very popular have completely disappeared today. Parents no longer want this at all for their children.
Fashions of first names come and go. Some are forgotten, others a little old-fashioned are coming back into fashion! That’s what we often hear. But in reality, there are certain first names that are really no longer popular at all and have fallen into oblivion. The story goes like this: certain first names have completely disappeared or are no longer given to newborns at all these days. It would no longer occur to you to call your child Pépin, Folquet, Gaubert or Berth and Guinevere, names so popular in the Middle Ages!
The 20th century was marked by certain trends in first names in France and statistics show that a large number, given in the 1960s, are no longer given today by young parents. We thus find in the list of disappearing first names Patrick and Philippe for boys, Martine, Catherine and Sylvie for girls, first names which were the most popular at the beginning of the 1960s.
But the phenomenon is even more intriguing for first names which experienced significant fame more recently, in the 1980s and 1990s, and which are no longer popular at all. Some were even among the most given first names for one or more years, therefore the most appreciated over this short period, and have become so unpopular that no one calls their children that anymore (or only a few rare people, don’t let’s not exaggerate anything).
Let’s remember a figure to seriously compare: the most given male first name in 2022 is Gabriel and has been given a little less than 5,000 times. This figure allows us to have a good order of magnitude in mind.
However, five first names stood out in the 1980s and 1990s: first there was Kevin, which was the most given first name between 1989 and 1994, with up to more than 14,000 children called that each year, according to INSEE . In the 2020s, only a few dozen per year have received this first name. The star first name of the 1980s and 1990s, Nicolas, has also fallen out of favor, but it is still three times more popular than Kevin. It was given more than 20,000 times in the early 1980s.
As for female first names, again according to INSEE, the top three of the most given and most forgotten first names are Elodie, Laura and Marine: the first was given more than 12,000 times at the end of the 1980s, the two others more than 8,000 times each year in the 1990s. Today Elodie has almost disappeared (only 43 children so called in 2022), Marine too (31 in 2022), Laura is resisting (nearly 300 in 2022) .