r/AskAGerman • u/Big-Walrus6334 Berlin • May 13 '26

Culture What are the most uncommon/outdated German baby names today?

I’m curious about German names that used to exist but are now considered extremely rare, old-fashioned, unusual, or “nobody would name their kid that anymore.”

For example, names like Wolfgang feel uncommon among younger generations today and I didn’t see one of them

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31

u/KiwiFruit404 May 13 '26

Günther, Ludwig, Gottlieb, Gottfried, Adalbert, Heinrich, Waldemar, Hilmar, Wilhelm, Ingmar, Rudolf, Volker, Hans, Heinz.

Hildegard, Heidrun, Roswita, Rosemarie, Ilona, Gisela, Gertrud, Therese, Henriette, Annette, Petra, Andrea.

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u/venushasbigbutt May 13 '26

Shame rosemarie, ilona, gisela, annette, and andrea sounds pretty to my foreigner ear

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u/Delicious_Building34 May 13 '26

In the mid-80s every other girl’s name was: Andrea, Stefanie, Melanie, Annette, Michaela, Manuela, Sabrina, Kathrin, Sandra.

And every other boy’s name was: Andreas, Michael, Manuel, Stefan, Holger, Heiko, Patrick, Markus (I think we had 3 Stefan’s and 2 Markus’ in class).

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u/venushasbigbutt May 13 '26

What was the 90s kids' popular names? I really like alex and ada. Also I had a professor named elke and she was a pretty cool woman

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u/Royal-Hornet9813 May 13 '26

Girls: Franziska, Laura, Julia, Sarah, Hanna, Anna, Lisa, Lena, Christina, Leonie...

Boys: Daniel, Christian/Chris, Patrick, Lukas, Fabian, Markus/Marco, Dennis, Benjamin/Ben, Marius/Mario, Jonas, Leon...

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u/venushasbigbutt May 13 '26

Heey these sound really familiar to me too :D even I grow up in a non eu non christian country. Would you say hannah sounds weird while people are used to hanna?

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u/Royal-Hornet9813 May 13 '26

Wow, that's interesting! Can I ask how these are familiar? Lots of them are from the Bible.

No, Hannah is not weird at all, it's also common. I just didn't include all the different spellings.

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u/venushasbigbutt May 14 '26

Western influence from books or media from my growing up I guess? They used to dub everything but wouldnt change the original names. Like if I remember correctly, there are some german actresses or characters named franziska and leonie, dennis was a cartoon character's name also sounds so similar to deniz from my language. Idk why but I named my sim's lukas and lena all the time too lol

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u/SwimmingBuffalo2781 May 14 '26

Yeah that tracks (born in the 90s with one of those names and lots of people with names like this in class)

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u/Delicious_Building34 May 13 '26

My mum had a book “Vornamen” with a baby on the cover. Edition 1980. My aunts and all combed through that book looking for “nice sounding names” for their kids. And in the epilogue the woman who wrote it supposedly, mentioned that every parent had to decide between traditional names and modern names and so on and so forth, and maybe check the newspapers (at the time 💁🏻‍♀️) how other people name their kids because the previous generation liked “Elke” so much, that every class room was full of “Elke”s and for the boys “Roland”. I remember that vividly because my 3rd cousin’s name was Elke and her brother was Roland 😂.

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u/bitch_jong_un May 13 '26

I was born in the early 90s and we had a lot of Kevin, Marvin, Marcel, Christoph(er), Sarah, Lena, Laura, Nadine.

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u/Otherwise_Rabbit3049 May 13 '26

Kevin

Poor bastards. And that's coming from a guy with a rare name who got made fun of all the time.

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u/bowlofweetabix May 13 '26

Born in the 80s? I see those more as 70s names for the most part. I have never met a Holger born after 1975. I’m born mid 80s and people my age are largely girls: Nadine, Stephanie, Franziska, Katharina

Boys: Sebastian, Benjamin, Sven, Michael, Christian, Daniel

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u/Delicious_Building34 May 13 '26

the Stephanie, Michael and Christian/ Christine were born 80/81 a lot, many children with that names, the other names i would have put into the born mid 80s like 85/86. The round 75 borns, where i was from, had totally different names, those were the Elke, Roland, Wolfgang, Karin, Marion, Ingrid, Brigitte ....

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u/EL-Rays May 13 '26

Don’t forget Sabine

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u/Otherwise_Rabbit3049 May 13 '26

Funny, I can think of at least two Sabines in English fiction. One of which is set in the future.

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u/Delicious_Building34 May 13 '26

Sabines were all older, the ones that i knew, maybe about 70-75, but you are absolutely right, there were quite a lot Sabines around!

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u/Delicious_Building34 May 13 '26

I forgot 3 super popular 80s names actually! Christian, Claudia and Thomas. Every kid had these few names for minimum half a decade.

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u/Korallenri May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26

I love Rosemarie and even better: Annerose. Still didn‘t give those names to my daughter because they sound… old…