Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Vintage Lyns & Lines

-lyns and -lines are having a boom right now (well, if you want to get statistical, -lyns actually peaked about 2010, while -lines are zipping right up to surpass them), but this isn't the first time it's happened! -lines previously peaked in the 1910s, -lyns & -lenes in the 1930s, and -leens in the 1940s.
Of course, there are many historically-established names with each ending, but our generation certainly wasn't the first to invent names to fit in with a trend! So, I thought it'd be fun to search the SSA lists of the 1910s-1940s to see what new -lyn/lynn/line/lyne/lene/leen names our great-grandparents came up with.
Just for interest's sake, here are the top 5 of each for 1910-1949 overall:


lyn/lynn
line
leen/lene
1.
Evelyn
Pauline
Kathleen
2.
Carolyn
Jacqueline
Eileen
3.
Marilyn
Madeline
Arlene
4.
Gwendolyn
Caroline
Darlene
5.
Lynn
Adeline
Marlene


Differentiating actual invented names from alternate spellings of existing names proved rather tricky, so I'm afraid I ended up just falling back to my usual method of comparing statistics. Here are the 25 most common lyn/line/leens from the previous boom that don't appear at all on 2016's SSA list:
  • Earline
  • Ethelyn
  • Darline
  • Alline
  • Lurline
  • Jacquline
  • Erline
  • Jacqulyn
  • Marolyn
  • Jerline
  • Helyn
  • Verline
  • Jacquelyne
  • Merline
  • Adline
  • Carline
  • Jacqualine
  • Charlyne
  • Marline
  • Ethlyn
  • Geraline
  • Merrilyn
  • Jerrilyn
  • Michaeline
  • Sharilyn

Obviously this route didn't catch all the vintage invented/trendy names (Marilyn and Jolene, for instance, still remain so familiar that most people probably don't realize they didn't really exist prior to the 20th century), but it worked a lot better than making myself dizzy by checking every name by hand. :p
The full list of no-longer-existent lyn/line/leens contains almost 300 names, so I'm not going to list them here (I will put them up on Sheets, though), but the bottom of that list is pretty interesting, too. Here are the names given to at most 5 babies in any year, 1910-1949:
  • Ailine
  • Athlyn
  • Atline
  • Bonalyn
  • Carmaline
  • Cathaline
  • Charilyn
  • Charolyn
  • Cherelyn
  • Corlyn
  • Darrellyn
  • Doraline
  • Earlynn
  • Ereline
  • Esteline
  • Faline
  • Fredlyn
  • Garlyn
  • Geline
  • Gereline
  • Geroline
  • Gwindolyn
  • Harline
  • Harrilyn
  • Irline
  • Janilyn
  • Jerralyn
  • Karline
  • Lorilyn
  • Lurlyne
  • Majorlynn
  • Marvaline
  • Matline
  • Mearline
  • Merlyne
  • Merrlyn
  • Olyne
  • Roline
  • Saline
  • Sharilynn
  • Sharolynn
  • Sherralyn
  • Sterline
  • Terilyn
  • Urline
  • Ursaline
  • Verlynn
  • Wavelyn
  • Wendellyn
  • Zelline



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