This Victorian Baby Name Is Making a Comeback
A little bird just whispered that Hattie, Sadie, and Beatrice may have some competition when it comes to popular baby names. According to Town & Country the next beloved old name to make a comeback is Birdie. As proof, the magazine not only looked at the rising popularity among celebrities— Actress Busy Phillips named her daughter Birdie Leigh and HGTV design star Emily Henderson calls her daughter, Elliott, by the nickname Birdie—as well as the name's surprise entry on to the list of 100 Best Baby Names for 2017.
Birdie, which has been used as a nickname in the South, was at its height around the turn of the 20th century, before dwindling away due to disuse. According to T &C in the year 2000, there were only seven babies named Birdie. Now, however, the name is on the rise again.
"Birdie feels like a sassy but sweet, down-to-earth yet unusual name," Pamela Redmond Satran, the author of the baby-naming guidebook Beyond Jennifer & Jason, who also runs the helpful naming site Nameberry.com told Town & Country. "It's also just old enough to be right on time." What she meant by that is that the name follows "the 100 Year or Four Generation Rule" where baby names need 100 years to come back into fashion as described on her website. According to Satran, that's why parents-to-be gravitate towards our great-grandmothers' names, not our mothers' monikers, although in the South some names never go out of style and vintage baby names are always in style.
Of course, the name Birdie has a long history in the South. In addition to the nicknames of countless grandmothers and great aunts, there are entire towns called Birdie in both Mississippi and Georgia. Plus there's a bright yellow mansion that sits on the Southern Shores of the Outer Banks bears the name, as do a Jacksonville hang out, a Hilton Head boutique, a Charleston event planner, and a chain of filling stations in Louisiana. And, of course, there's the Virginian specialty known as Birdie's Pimento Cheese.
