Is Your Name Going Extinct?

"Can you imagine a friend calling you and saying they had a baby and they named their baby Lisa? Or Susan? Or Suzette?"

"I remember turning that rack and looking and kind of getting to the S's and having a glimmer of hope that Suzette was there, even though I knew it wouldn't be,"

"Lisa is 935. She's hanging on by a thread but will probably be extinct in the next year or two. Carole's out. Carole's out for good."

"Just this week we stopped at a tourist destination on a road trip and there was a huge rack of names. I spun it and could not find a single Lisa, I was laughing. My kids were dying. They were like, 'There's a million Ashleys. There's a million Brittanys. There's not a single Lisa.' And I said, 'Gone is my name'."

Two Denver mothers made a viral video joking about older female names disappearing from name-rack merchandise. One recalled always finding her name everywhere as a child; the other rarely saw hers despite searching hope. Social Security Administration rankings show formerly common names slipping: Linda at 835 and Lisa at 935 on the 2024 list. A baby-name expert defines an "extinct" name as one absent from the SSA top 1,000. Popularity shifts since the 1970s have pushed many once-common names toward rarity, and some names are predicted to fall off the list entirely soon.

Read at TODAY.com