Victorian names ready for a second century

Before the names

Every name here peaked in the Victorian era and appears in current records, ranked by today's use.

Both halves of that sentence are doing work. The US records begin in 1880, so a pre-1900 peak means the name was at its height in the first two decades of the data — the oldest evidence this dataset holds. And a current rank means it is not an artefact: real families are choosing it this year.

Victorian naming had habits that read clearly today. Virtue names and flower names ran together (Grace, Pearl, Ivy, Hazel); Old Testament names carried the boys' lists (Ezra, Silas, Amos, Levi); and a great many names were formal, three syllables, and unembarrassed about it. Those three streams have returned at very different speeds.

The fastest of them are no longer a secret — a few Victorian revivals now sit inside the current top 50, which is further than most comebacks ever travel. If the appeal is the era rather than the fashion, the names deeper in this list carry the same century behind them with none of the company.