The Names That Vanished

Every year, the national birth data quietly stops listing some names. A name appears only when at least five babies receive it; slip below five, and it vanishes from the chart — not necessarily from the world, but from the record. In 2023 and 2024 alone, 2,811 name-and-gender combinations were recorded for the last time — 1,588 for girls, 1,223 for boys.

Most of those were always small. This page is about the other kind. Of the names that ended in 2023 or 2024, 363 had been recorded for at least 40 years — and just 55 of them once peaked at 1,000 or more babies in a single year: 40 girls' names and 15 boys'. These are the twelve most notable of each, ranked by their peak.

Girls: the Debra generation checks out

Debra is the giant of the list. In 1955 she was the #4 name in America — 50,531 babies. She was still given to 106 girls in 2000 and 23 in 2010; her final listing is 2024, with 15. Cheryl (#13 at her 1958 peak, 24,110 babies) and Debbie (#20 in 1959) end the same year, with seven and six babies. The pattern is a generation: the names that defined American classrooms from the 1950s through the 1980s are leaving the record together.

Not all of them faded smoothly. Ethel — #28 in 1918 with 8,070 babies — spent two decades flickering at the edge: present in 2001–2004, then single appearances in 2009, 2017 and 2022 before a last listing in 2023, with six babies. We wrote about her in Names That Vanished: Myrtle, Gertrude and Ethel, when 2023 was simply her most recent year; the newer data confirms she has now fallen below the line entirely — for now.

The girls' list runs nearly three times as long as the boys' — 40 names to 15. Girls' names turn over faster: parents have always experimented more with daughters' names (see Girls Get More Names Than Boys), and the same churn that creates more new girls' names retires more old ones.

Boys: Herbert's 115-year run ends

Herbert may be the most complete run in the entire dataset: he is recorded in every single year from 1910 through 2024 — 115 consecutive listings, peaking at #25 in 1928 with 8,064 boys. His 2024 listing, with 12 babies, is his last. Jeff ran nearly as long — 114 recorded years, peaking at #49 in 1961 — and ended in 2023 with eight babies.

Wilbur took the scenic route out: a top-100 name in 1918 (1,791 babies), his last eight appearances are scattered across 24 years — 2001, 2007, 2009, 2013, 2016, 2018, 2022 and a final flicker in 2024, with five babies. And Leslie, for boys, closes a story we have told before: almost perfectly split between the sexes in 1950, the boys' Leslie fell below the line after 2023 — the crossover described in Leslie: The Crossover That Completed is now complete in fact as well as in trend.

Gone from the chart is not gone from the world

"Vanished" here means fewer than five babies in a year — a name on this page may still be given to one, two or four children a year, and nothing stops it crossing back. Names do return: our companion piece, The Comeback Names, counts 289 names that came back in 2024 or 2025 after at least eight years away. But for names whose peaks were measured in the tens of thousands, the cultural moment has passed: Debra's 50,531 babies of 1955 are grandmothers now, and the chart has moved on.

Our advice: if a name on this page is a family name you love, its disappearance is not a warning — it is an opportunity. A vanished name is familiar to every ear, spelled the way it sounds, and guaranteed to be the only one in the classroom. Just know the data says you will be nearly alone in choosing it.

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Source: U.S. Social Security Administration · Data through 2025 · Updated 2026