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The baby name that went from 3rd most popular to the 1129th in 43 years.

 

While names like Barry, Gavin, Craig, Angela and Beverly might be dying out in Australia, none quite match the downfall of the name Heather in the US.

Using baby-name data dating back to the 1880s, online publication Quartz says no name has been so popular only to crash and burn like the girl’s name.

Apologies to anyone with the flower-inspired moniker, but the truth hurts.

Thanks to Quartz’s research, we know its popularity peaked in 1975 with more than 24,000 bearing the name on their birth certificates, making it the third most popular name for girls, after only Jennifer and Amy, names which remain popular to this day.

Then in 2017, Heather dropped way, way down the list to 1,129th place and only 219 girls born in that year were given the name.

Reddit have found the worst baby names they’ve ever heard and oh boy… they aren’t great.

Video by MWN

According to World Bank data, in 2017 girls and boys were born at an equal rate in the US and with nearly 4 million births that means 2 million of them were female. Put in that perspective, 219, is a very small number.

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And when you think about it, it makes sense. Since the name peaked over 43 years ago, you’d be hard pressed to find a famous Heather under that age.

Heather-Locklear
Heather Locklear (Melrose Place) and Heather Graham (Twin Peaks) are some of the few famous Heathers we can think of. Image: Getty.

According to naming trends expert, Laura Wattenberg of Her Name Wizard most names will go through a popularity life cycle, but for Heather, it's been more dramatic.

“Heather climbed gradually into popularity through the 1950s and ’60s, then took its biggest leap in 1969, a year that featured a popular Disney TV movie called Guns in the Heather," she told Quartz.

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"A whole generation of Heathers followed, at which point Heather became a ‘mom name’ and young parents pulled away.”

As you can imagine, many Heathers came forward, resigned to the fact that yep, their name is dying.

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Do you know a Heather? Why do you think that name has gone down in popularity so rapidly? Tell us in a comment below.

 

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