'Every 4-year-old girl in my son’s class is named like Ingrid and Astrid and Edna': Moms discuss the rise in little girls with old lady names

Emmy Pratt • Senior Editor

Jul 18, 2024 12:00 PM EDT

You have a generationally appropriate name if you are a millennial named Ashley, Brittany, or Lindsay. The same applies if you're a baby boomer named Betty, Susan, or Pattie. For some reason, girl names seem to change more throughout the years, making their marks on every generation. You'd be hard-pressed to find a baby named "Karen" these days, and there's a good reason for that. We are living in the age of Everlees.

Just because there are a lot of newfangled baby names that seem to define Gen Alpha doesn't mean that all modern names are getting pulled out of a hat. As one mom observed on Twitter, a lot of little girls today have so-called "grandma names." We're not even talking about boomer grandma names; we're talking names that haven't been popular since the early 1900s. Millennial and Gen Z moms are out with the new and in with the old, and I'm here for it.