If you look around at the middle names of your female friends, it’s not hard to see that simple, common name choices were a trend of the 80s and 90s.
But one writer for Babe in the UK, Roisin Lanigan, has sparked a discussion about why two middle names are particularly common for women in their 20s and 30s: Louise and Rose.
“There is one constant in life and it’s that every girl you know has the middle name Louise,” she writes. “The middle name Louise transcends all differences which divide us as women.”
She adds, “There is but one exception to the Twilight Zone-esque Louise phenomenon, and that is Rose.”
And we’ve got to say, she’s definitely onto something. Heck, even my middle name is Louise!
After doing some digging, she found that Louise was a very popular name in the 90s indeed.
In 1991, 100 million girls were named Louise. In 1995, it was 136 million – and that’s only the first named women!
Rose was even more prominent – 475 million girls were named Rose in 1991. In 1995 it was 445 million.
The Louise trend could be due to the 1991 classic Thelma & Louise. But it could also be due to the fact that it’s an easy one syllable name that goes very well with other names, like Rose does.
Lanigan concludes that at the end of the day, it’s something you can connect with other women about.
“It’s funny,” she writes. “It’s fodder for small talk when you’re in a room full of girls you don’t know without any alcohol to make you brave enough to make friends. Here’s a thing you have in common: you’ve all got the middle name Rose or Louise.”
