Gen Alpha have a say on which names they consider to be 'old'

Like many trends, popular baby names are always changing with the times and it's clear to understand through the eyes of Gen Alpha who have declared which baby names they class as "old."

(Gen X and Millennials might be surprised to see what names are mentioned).

In a viral video, mother and TikToker Amber Cimiotti (@ciaoamberc), 37, shared a chat she had with her five-year-old daughter Scarlett where the youngster shared what names she considered to be for "old people."

"The other day, my daughter told me the names Ashley or Amanda — or my name is Amber — are like old people names," Cimiotti said in her video.

"She's like, 'Yeah, my teacher's names are like, Ms. Erica, Ms. Samantha. There are Amandas and Ashleys.'"

The TikToker added: "She's like, 'Those are just old people names.'"

The video now has over 3.3m views as people in the comment section discussed their name observations.

One person wrote: "If you got a shout out in Mambo Number 5, congrats you now have a granny name lol."

"Little do they know that the 'new names' are actually grandma names to us lol," another person said, nothing that popular names come in trend cycles.

Someone else added: "’I'd argue that Ashley, Brittany, etc. are the new Lisa and Debbie. Lisa and Debbie are the new Barbara and Dorothy."

"I always thought of old people names as like Edith, Norma, Ethel," a fourth person commented.

"I never thought of it from that point of view because I will always think of those names as my friends I met in fifth grade," Cimiotti told Business Insider.

"But now that I drop her off at school, there are no Ashley's, there are no Amanda's. It's Harpers and Madison's and London's and Scarlett's. So she's right."

The names which Cimoitti's daughter mentioned - your Amanda's, Ashley's and Amber's - were in the top 50 most popular names for girls in the US between 1981 and 1996, according to the Social Security Administration, and it was a similar picture in England and Wales where these names also featured along with the likes of Samantha, Sarah, Laura and Gemma which were also top of the list.

But these names are no longer the most popular as none of them have appeared in the top 100 since 2021.

Currently, Olivia and Emma are the on-trend girl names as they have been in the top 10 since 2010 in the US, while in the UK, Olivia and Amelia have been among the most popular names in recent years.

So no doubt in the decades to come the future generations will consider the likes of Olivia, Emma, and Amelia as "old" names.

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