Is your name going extinct?

Lisa Shivers

Growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, Donna Brown Little wished she had been named after her mother, Drucilla.

“I would have liked to be Dru,” says Donna, 54.

But her mother hated the name, Donna says. In fact, when her mother began elementary school, she asked to be called Judy instead. “She’s 77 years old and still goes by Judy,” says Donna, whose first name was selected from a baby name book in the early 1960s.

From 1960 to 1969, “Donna” was among the 10 most popular names for baby girls in the United States, according to ssa.gov/babynames, a government website that lets people search baby name data by state, birth year or decade. From 1940 to 1949, the decade when Donna’s mother chose her new name, “Judy” and “Judith” were among the 15 most popular female names, according to the Social Security Administration.

A search of 2015’s top baby girl names, the most recent government data available, shows that “Donna,” “Judy” and “Judith” no longer rank among the 500 most popular names.