Pet Names So Ugly They're Cute

Best known these days as the name of an American department store chain, Dillard was once a baby name that ranked on the US Top 1000, at least until the middle of the last century.

More user-friendly than the original.

Marge used to be as common as Maggie or Megan, ranking on its own in the girls' Top 1000 from 1900 until right after World War II, when so many Old School names fell off the list in favor of a new generation cuter, perkier choices.

Ingeborg (and all Germanic and Scandinavian names beginning with Ing-) references the ancient fertility god Ing. Ing, later known as Freyr, is one of the primary gods in Old Norse mythology.

Sounds like a displaced Dr. Seuss character.

Associated all through the swing years with bandleader brothers Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey.

Hilma is heard in Germany and the Scandinavian countries, and sometimes used as a shortening of Wilhelmina--though there are more appealing German names for girls. to be found. Hilma Wolitzer is an American novelist and the mother of author Meg Wolitzer.

As dated as the old Pat Boone song.

The Spanish Alonso and the Italian Alonzo are both widely used in the US, so you may meet more guys named Lonny than you expect.

Loring lives as a first name thanks to the Kansas doctor Loring Miner who first sounded the alarm on what became known as the Spanish Flu.

Part Verna, part Bernice, Vernice saw use as a girls' name during the heyday of both those names. Both entered the Top 200 in the 1880s, where Verna lasted until 1940 and Bernice a decade longer.

Melvina ranked in the Top 1000 for over 65 years in the US, coinciding to a large extent with the years its much more popular masculine counterpart Melvin ranked in the Top 100. Today, Melvin is still hanging on in the Top 1000 for boys, but Melvina hasn't been given to more than 20 babies in a year since 1991.

This Myrtle variation may not be the most melodious choice but it does have that appealing nature meaning.

Aurelia may be back in a big way, but Oralee and Oralie definitely are not. Would you really want to name your daughter "orally"?

You're so vain, I bet you think this name is about you.

The lilting Lorelei has given birth to many variations, including this one, now extinct.

Orpha, with its Biblical roots and its animal meaning, was once a fairly popular name, but fell from sight around the time of the Second World War, along with so many other Old School Names. And its similarity to the word orphan probably didn't help.