This unlikely name is back on the charts. What other relics could be next?

Abner is not a hit baby name. Abner has never been a hit baby name. But once upon a time, Abner was at least an ordinary name—and against all odds, it’s becoming one again.

Decline and Fall

Back in the 1800s the name Abner sat comfortably on the outskirts of popularity. It was a modestly common biblical choice, not quite at the level of Joshua or Eli but a notch above Caleb and Seth. In the 20^th Century the name started to decline, and in 1934 the Abner situation turned dire. That year the name fell out of the U.S. top-1000 names list for the first time ever, and the comic strip Li’l Abner made its debut.

The strip centered on naïve country bumpkin Li’l Abner Yokum and his hillbilly village of Dogpatch. Cartoonist Al Capp’s parody was preposterously extreme, and his choice of the name Abner shows how far that name’s star had sunk. (Other Dogpatch residents included Moonshine McSwine and Lucifer Ornamental “Pappy” Yokum.) The hugely popular comic in turn sealed Abner’s jokey fate.

The rest of the 20^th century was not kind to the name. On the sitcom Bewitched, nosy neighbor Gladys Kravitz would cry out for her husband, “Abner! Aaabner!!” On the animated series Hey Arnold!, Abner was Arnold’s pet pig. And on the baby name front, even Elmer was vastly more popular.

Comeback Kid?

Now it’s 2024, and improbable Abner has returned to the top 1000. Parents’ eagerness for “new” biblical options surely played a part in this rebirth; even names of biblical villains have been rising. The surprise is that so many parents are willing to embrace Abner’s sound. The name’s dense consonants and nasal sounds have been style kryptonite for decades.

Does Abner signal a changing of the tide? Smooth, vowel-forward styles still dominate, but there are signs of life in other stigmatized and consonant-heavy names. Jethro, the name of the Beverly Hillbillies’ counterpart to Li’l Abner, has risen tenfold since the turn of the millennium. Agnes is poised to return to the girls’ top-1000 list for the first time in half a century. And last year, over a hundred American girls were named Edna. In the wild world of contemporary naming, anything is possible.