Is YOUR name on the list? Study reveals US popular boy names over the past century that are now EXTINCT

Have you recently met a baby named ‘Clifford’? How about ‘Claude’? 

If the answer is ‘no,’ there is a good reason for it – and data to back it up. 

New research combed through 121 years of US Social Security Administration data to uncover the most popular male names that have since disappeared from our modern world. 

The data revealed 10 common names in the early 1900s that fell off by 2020, including Willie, Elmer and Herbert – and much of the reason stems from the rise of pop culture.

A Reddit user combed through mountains of data to compile a list of men’s names that have died off.

The Redditor, who goes by u/Phanyxx, started with the top 1,000 most popular names in the 20th century and tracked when they fell out of the top 1,000.

They posted the results on the ‘r/dataisbeautiful’ page, where it had been upvoted 276 times as of this article’s publication.

In some cases, a name’s decline can be mapped onto cultural milestones.

For instance, the 1987 release of the screwball comedy film Ernest Goes to Camp signaled the beginning of the end for the name.

‘Ernest’ was very popular at the beginning of the century, ranking as high as 28th in the nation in 1906.

But after a steady 32-year decline, it fell out of the US’s top 1,000 most popular men’s names in 2019.

‘Ernie’ never got as popular as its more formal version, reaching 305th in 1945. And it fell out of the top 1,000 in 1989 – 20 years after the TV show Sesame Street debuted.

‘Bert,’ Ernie’s counterpart, was already declining when Sesame Street debuted, reaching its peak in 1901 and dropping from the top 1,000 in 1984.

Here are a few of the names that went from most to least popular in a handful of decades, according to Phanyxx’s analysis:

This list is ranked in order of most to least recent loss of popularity.

But there are some gaps in it – these were just the highlights.

For instance, Herbert peaked at 25th place, Elmer 38th, and Chester 53rd.

DailyMail.com has reached out for the full list and will update this story if we receive it.