Meghan and Harry have named their daughter Lilibet ‘Lili’ Diana Mountbatten-Windsor – a sweet tribute to the Queen.
Lili is named after her great-grandmother, Her Majesty The Queen, whose family nickname is Lilibet. The baby girl’s middle name, Diana, was chosen to honour her late grandmother, The Princess of Wales.
Lilibet was first used when the then Princess Elizabeth was just a toddler and unable to pronounce her own name properly.
Her grandfather King George V would affectionately call her “Lilibet” imitating her own attempts to say Elizabeth.
The pet name stuck and she became Lilibet to her family from then on.
The old-fashioned name has got us thinking about other vintage baby names having a comeback. From Princess Eugenie’s son August, to Boris Johnson and Carrie Simmons’ child Wilfred, many parents are looking to the past when naming their child.
Researchers from family history platform, MyHeritage, have opened up their archives to find the traditional baby names seeing a resurgence in popularity.
The most popular names when records began in 1780 were Mary, John, William and Elizabeth, they found. Other popular names at the time – Alfred, Bertie, Frank, Fred, Leonard, and Sidney – all saw a 21st-century peak in 2012. And Olive, Violet and Elsie all matched their original Victorian-era peak in 2019.
MyHeritage looked at census data from the 1800s and mapped it with current trends to find the baby names seeing a revival. Here’s the top 10.
1. Bertie
2. Olive
3. Violet
4. Agnes
5. Mabel
6. Wilfred
7. Elsie
8. Leonard
9. Clara
10. Sidney
Looking for some more inspiration? Sift through our baby names section.