Well it's official! Those never coming back 60s/70s names are on their way!

[NancyJones]

Ok, so not official but today I met an uber cool mum. You know, effortlessly chic with stunning DH and beautiful boden catalogue children? Anyway, she had a 2yr old DS called Jonny and baby twin girls called...Pamela and Jennifer. Now I'm not sure if Jennifer has ever gone out of fashion but Pamela certainly had, surely? She called them Jen and Pam too! I said I thought her children were beautiful and that she was probably setting a new trend in 60s retro cool names (I meant this genuinely). She said yes, she was quite sure that by the time her Pam was 10, Pamela would be the new Florence. I believed her too!
I realised I'm probably outing where I live as there can't be that many but hey, I thought it was cool!

Every single mom at the DCs' school (35-45) is called Jo or Claire

At my Catholic schools we had a smattering of saints names - Philomena, Mary, Theresa etc - but the girls names I remember most were Samantha, Geraldine, Maria, Mairi, Colette, and a few double barreled names Like Mary-Jo, Ann-Frances etc. I can only remember one Tracey.

Boys at school were called Alex, James, Aidan, Paul, Gerard (my first crush was a Gerard).

What I did notice at my school was if you were a boy and your given name had a regular shortened form, it was rarely used. James was James, Robert was Robert etc.

I was born in 1967.

I wanted my ds2 to be James, known as Jim but DH wouldn't go for it. I also wanted DD to be Frances but he took against that too.

Damn his eyes!

Adore Angela, Valerie and Louise. Will never understand why Louise went out of fashion.

I have bad, bad associations with the name Pam and the thought of it making a comeback is making me shudder.

And I don't want Pamela and Angela to make a comeback. I want names that don't bloody well end in a to make a comeback.

Started school mid-60s.

Girls were Jane/Jeanette, Shona, Sandra, Margaret and variations, Catherine/Kathleen, Fiona, Helen, Lorraine, with the odd Pam, Pat, Hazel, Denise, Lorna, Maureen, Lesley.

Doreen, Jean, Joan, Barbara, Irene, Agnes were very definitely 10 years older.

Boys were David (lots of Davids in my neck of the woods!), John, Ian, James/Jim/Jimmy, Colin, Allan, Steph/ven, Geoffrey/Jeffrey, Robert, Frank, Gordon, Paul, Peter, William/Billy, Thomas/Tom/Tommy, Graham/Graeme, Alexander/Alec/Sandy.

Not so much variation in boys names from those born 10 years earlier.

How times change...

Oh, and Alison. How did I forget Alison! And Sheila/Sheena.

I have a David! marking place on thread so I can choose matching names for his siblings.

I like Betty

These are great names.

Not Sarah though - oh no no no. There are seven billion of us already!

Nicola - there were loads of Nicolas
Gina
Susannah / Suzanne
Lisa
Most common name was Catherine, in all variants
Debbie

Boys were all the four gospels basically, plus Jeremy, Damian, Jonathan, Julian

In my professional life I seem to know loads of Tims of about my age or a bit older.

I wonder if Valerie will ever come back...

On my way home is a Jill murphy book published in 1982- on her way home protagonist Claire meets all her friends- its literally a book of 70s names including Paul, Samantha, Jonathan - it was last nights bedtime story and reminded me of this thread!

I went to a very smart girls boarding school in the 80s. 70% of the girls were called Caroline, Helen, Sarah, Kate, Clare, Julia, Victoria, Amanda, Alexandra, Jane, Rebecca or Lucy.

20% were called names like Natasha, Iona, Isla, Tara, Melissa, Diana, Felicity, Jessica, Susannah.

5% were called silly nicknames like Flossie, Bunty, Santa, Ferdy, Lully, Kitty.

3% were called names that the other 98% derided as being lower class including Nicole, Claire (the 'I' made all the difference!), Wendy, Lynda, Dawn, Karen, Alison, Tina and Natalie. There were no Sharons, Traceys or Lorraines and they simply wouldn't have survived the abuse if they were.

2% were foreign and usually prefixed with the title "Princess"

In hindsight poor Dawn and Karen had a completely different school experience than they would have done if they were called Jane or Helen. Not helped by the fact that the kitchen maids were also called Dawn and Karen. Awful, really.

My dd born in 1974 is Joanna Sarah I blush to think how conventional I was though I still love the name Joanna (not Joanne) and Sarah is partof my own name.

It's strange how names come in and go out of fashion over the years. You can almost pinpoint someone's age by their first name. I didn't like my name when I was growing up but now that I live abroad a lot of people comment on what a nice name I have! And as CheerfulYank has indicated, it could become popular again!

How about Patricia?

I really like Jane but its not really pretty like current popular names that all end in an a- its time will come!

Patricia? A baby Trisha could be cute. Hate nn Pat though. 100% Pat Butcher

3% were called names that the other 98% derided as being lower class

Maybe the 98% should have paid more attention in maths class

In our school playground there's a baby Jeremy, isn't something I can see coming back into fashion but i could be wrong.

Whoops
You are assuming I'm not Wendy

Pauline and Anita
Andrew and Christopher

I love the name Dawn. I also really like Anita, Elaine and Rebecca.

My GM is Sharon and she's 67! It was very unusual when she was born! Not so much now.