No Other Name

Names come and go, but there’s one we should never forget.

Do you ever wonder how certain baby names go out of fashion? It happens so reliably that you can often guess someone’s age just by their name.

You aren’t likely to meet any Mildreds, Gertrudes, Clarences or Herberts these days. Those names were hugely popular in the early 1900s. But they are almost unknown today.

If you run into a Linda, Debbie, Ronald or Gary, they are probably 60 or older. Those names were common in the 1950s but appear on few babies’ birth certificates today.

You won’t see many Jennifers, Jessicas, Scotts or Brians in high school classrooms today — unless you happen to be sitting in on a parent-teacher conference.

Baby names go in and out of fashion — a process that often takes a generation to fully manifest itself. But there are a few exceptions. Sometimes a hugely popular baby name disappears almost overnight.

Case in point: the name Alexa. (You can probably guess why.) Plenty of baby girls were named Alexa in the 1990s...