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[Opinions] Mary
Do you think Mary will ever rebound in popularity? It's been consistently popular for centuries but now looks like it's going the way of the dinosaur.

This message was edited 10/18/2017, 6:42 AM

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I may come back in favour again, but I think a lot of modern day parents are still finding it a bit boring. I find that rather sad though, it's a beautiful name imo.
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I adore Mary and would love to use it one day. I think it definitely will rebound.
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It's peaked. I could see it making a bit of a comeback but it'll never be chart topper again.
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If it does rebound in popularity, it's going to be a long long time. I'm betting not sooner than a hundred to a hundred and fifty years from now. The board has a lot of people who love Mary, but I think the general public agrees with me---it was so consistently popular for so long that it became robbed of any personality, and when you name your daughter Mary, you may as well be naming her "Hey You." Also, I'm older than most people here, so Mary was more popular when I was born and for the two decades before and after I was born than it was for most people here. In fact, it was still #1 the year I was born. So I've known quite a lot of girls/women named Mary. No fewer than 10. It is so not "refreshing" to me, for all that I know that it's now out of the top hundred. It's a name that is going to hang in the public consciousness as generic for a long time, even once it happens, if it hasn't already, that most people don't know anyone named Mary.
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I think it will. I love the name Mary. It's still used a lot in double names in the US South.
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I don't think it will totally disappear, but I think that it will take way more than a couple of generations before it ever has anything approaching its previous popularity.
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it's way too steeped in history to just fade away, so it'll definitely come back. but not anytime soon i don't think, because of the associations this generation of parents have with it. many people who grew up on the internet, and so fandom culture, associate the term with Mary Sues. and then there's Mary Jane as in, Mary Jane. though that's just among a few different niches of people in this generation. like you said, it's been popular for millennia, so two minor associations won't stop it for long.
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