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(NEXSTAR) – Much like the doomed flightless dodo, baby names like “Emory,” “Jamie” or “Remy” are quickly being stamped out by the same humans who once found them so uniquely remarkable.
These names — and more — are among the entries on BabyCenter’s latest list of 2025’s “Baby Names at Risk of Going Extinct,” as based on data submitted by registered users of the parenting resource website.
“Hundreds of thousands of parents register their babies’ names and we analyze the biggest trends that shake up the rankings,” BabyCenter editor Rebekah Wahlberg said of the site’s efforts to identify the Yangtze finless porpoises or Sumatran orangutans of the baby-naming world.
At the very top of BabyCenters’ 2025 list (meaning they’ve dropped the furthest in popularity) are “Jamie” and “Jamal,” which were determined to be the fastest-falling baby names for girls and boys, respectively. The former fell 320 spots in popularity from 2023 to 2024 among BabyCenter users, while the latter fell a whopping 433 spots. (BabyCenter did not disclose how many babies, specifically, were registered with any of the fastest-falling names as of 2024.)
While a drastic drop, “Jamie” and “Jamal” weren’t the only names that parents were no longer embracing by 2024. Plenty of other once-more-popular names fell significantly in the rankings during that year.
Girls’ names going ‘extinct,’ according to BabyCenter data:
- Jamie (down 320)
- Katie (down 290)
- Remy (down 277)
- Liv (down 257)
- Analia (down 245)
- Karina (down 243)
- Belle (down 242)
- Erin (down 231)
- Bristol (down 230)
- Lilia (down 230)
Boys‘ names going ‘extinct,’ according to BabyCenter data:
- Jamal (down 433)
- Esteban (down 283)
- Cannon (down 268)
- Emery (down 241)
- Taylor (down 199)
- Kareem (down 193)
- Idris (down 187)
- Camilo (down 185)
- Matthias (down 179)
- Danny (down 176)
In addition to identifying the dodos of the naming community, BabyCenter’s analysts also claim they have observed downward trends among boy names ending in “-aden” (e.g., “Jaden”) or names inspired by the British Royal Family (“Catherine,” “Edward,” “Albert,” “Anne”).
Speaking with Nexstar in 2024, baby-naming consultants Colleen Slagen of NamingBebe.com suggested a possible reason for names which rapidly crash in prevalence, like so many ancient megalodons during an extinction-level event.
“I steer people away from trendy,” said Slagen, who directs her clients to the Social Security Administration’s annual rankings of the top-used baby names in the country. “Any name that jumps over 100 spots a year in popularity … in my mind, that’s the sign of a name that’s going to go out of fashion.”
As an example, Slagen pointed to “Everly” and “Everleigh,” two names which exploded in popularity around 2012-2013. (The former spelling, “Everly,” jumped over 500 spots to become the 379th most-used name for females in 2013. In 2023, it was 69th.)
“And spelling it differently, it doesn’t necessarily make it unique. Just more confusing,” Slagen said.
More information, including additional names that we might as well be clubbing into extinction, can be found at BabyCenter.com.
