Older MNers who had kids in the 80s/90s

It really isn't. It's a hybrid of Loo which means toilet and wheeze which means asthmatic breathing. I think it's one of the ugliest girls' names.

My grandmother who was born 1906 has Louise as a middle name, so that was a different time completely.

Yes mine too, born in 60s but not my dds

I was born in the 70s but mum was 30 years ahead of her time and gave me the gen z middle name favourite Grace.

All the LOLz. Louise was a popular name back then hey?! 😆 It's my cousin's middle name, and my BFF's.

My DC have a first name AND a middle name that were hugely popular when they were born. (mid 1990s,) yet they don't know, and have never met anyone with the combination of the 2 names.

Both first names are very 1990s, yet they have only ever met 2 or 3 people with their first name - ever. They are 30-ish now...

Weird.

And many of their mothers were called Sue, few insisted on Susan.

Neither of my boys did… just sayin’

Nearly every single Emma I’ve met is an Emma Louise.

Same reason I guess as everyone having Mae/May or Rose as a middle/double barrel now. Trends take off but seem to be more prolific for middle names.

There will be those of us that are glad to have been spared the trend. Just wonder which name is next.

I didn't have kids in the 80s or 90s but have Louise as a middle name. It was a very popular middle name when I was at school!

Now, girls seem to all have Rose, Rae or May/Mae!

I've got three girls, born 1990, 1992 and 1996. Not a Louise among them. Nor in my family anywhere, although I do know a lot of Louises (ALL of them currently going by Lou). But all my kids have quite unusual names and I don't remember even giving Louise the time of day when we were choosing.

That covers most of our family names from 1973 til 2010 lol

Yes it was definitely a rule!

That’s my middle name but I was born in 69’ and it was considered exotic at the time 😆

I bet you can guess my first name too!

Child of 70s and have Louise as a middle name, apparently after my GM who was Louisa - why the hell they didn’t call me that in stead of the ubiquitous Louise!

And mine lol

I think most people with Louise as a middle name were born in the 70’s!

There are millions of teenagers now with the - Mae/ May thing going on.

I'm from the generation which has Louise as a middle name

I like the theory that it's a shifted generation name, so it's used to memorialise favourite relatives but not used as a first name because in the 90s Louise was strongly associated with a different generation? This is similar to the reasons we chose some of our DC's middle names, we wanted to remember relatives, but didn't particularly like the sound of the name as a first name. Looking online it seems that Louise as a first name had a popularity peak in the 1970s.

The thing of name trends is fascinating to me - especially the fact that so often people pick a name because it sounds unusual and interesting to them or they don't know many people with that name - only to find that it is then one of the top 10 names for that year. I think this probably happens because some names go in cycles, so people tend to avoid using names for babies if the name "feels like" it should belong to a grandmother or a middle aged uncle (or, indeed, every third child in your own school class). Therefore certain names get attached to a specific generation and fall out of favour for a while. But eventually, the generation who have a large amount of that name die, and because they were the great-grandparents (or older) of the current generation of new parents, that generation don't have the same association of those names as "old person names" because they don't have any memory of people in their lifetime having those names. They mainly come across them in literature for example, which makes them feel unusual and unique.

I would guess BTW this is probably where that thing comes from that so many people choose the same name while having the perception that the name is unusual - we all read the same book or watched the same film as a child, for example. Or it could simply be that in the absence of brand new names, the pool of potential names is not actually that big to begin with and if you've ruled out the "classic names" that never really go out of fashion (Jack, Elizabeth, Henry, Amelia etc) and you don't want a name associated with your own generation, your parents' generation or your grandparents' generation, then there's not that many really to pick.

Daughter - 1988 - middle name Helen, after her only auntie

Son - 1990 - middle name James, after my dad, who died when I was 13

Son - 1992 - made the mistake of letting my husband go and register the birth. He "couldn't think of anything", so gave him his own name as a middle name 🙄

No Louises.

When I was a child, the popular middle name was Ann/Anne.

I think the popularity of Anne in the 1950s was largely down to Princess Anne.

I think the idea of Louise being reminiscent of her grandfather's name in your DD's case is really nice.

My daughter was born in the nineties and her middle name is Mary. She hates it. Would have probably preferred Louise.

Name change for this thread but I'm a 60s baby and it's my first name. I can only vaguely remember one other in my whole secondary school about 5 years younger than me. None of my classmates had it as a first name. I did work with one who was a few months older than me.

The film Gigi was late 50s, I think, and did that have the song "All the birds in the trees seem to whisper Louise" in it? Might have my wires crossed but I think that song was in the living memory of parents having kids in the 60s who wanted a French name for their daughters.

It probably became a ubiquitous middle name because it flows easily from lots of other names and is a lovely name 😀 I do really like my name and I'm glad it's my first name and I'm quite a bit older than the generation who have it as a middle name. All the girls in my school (Catholic) had Ann/e or Marie as middle names. I have neither of them. I think my parents choose lovely middle names for me and my siblings.

I always wanted a middle name. My late MIL born in the thirties had Louise as a middle name. It went very well with her first name. I think there was a popular film star called Louise Brooks in the twenties and thirties? I am not sure why the name would endure after that though.

I was born in the 50s and my middle name is Anne and my dd was born 1989 her middle name is Louise. I think because my fil was Lewis and dh wanted something near to that. Hadn't realised it was that common.

I'm seriously old, 1948, and in Primary school two of us has exactly the same name, Christian and surname, neither of us had a middle name so I went through Primary school as Name Name 2, I was so glad she didn't get to the grammar school with me for it to continue. (Just proof read and changed 1048 to 1948, I'm not that old!)