Alumni magazines are one of my very favorite guilty pleasure, and when I received one of my alma mater’s last night, I put it in my very-necessary-things-to-do pile and dove right in after the boys were in bed.

Though I usually turn right to 1990 or so, to the people most likely to list their kiddos’ names, I decided to start from the beginning (in this case, 1932), and found a lot of names of interest, names that I thought looked more like preschool rosters of today, or at least of much younger people (it was originally an all-girls’ college, I don’t remember when it switched to co-ed but the first male alumnus mentioned in this issue was Class of ’77).

I used alternate characters in the names that I thought might be particularly identifying:

Ila (’36)
Phoebe (’43)
Libby (’44)
Genevieve (’44)
Claire (’47, ’56)
Isabelle (’47)
Evelyn (’48, ’54)
Katey (’48)
Leah (’49)
Catherine (’50)
Margot (’50, ’56)
Margaret (’51)
Charlotte (’51, ’55)
Gabr!elle (’53) (twin of G3rda!) (alternate character for privacy)
Natalie (’53)
Josephine (’53)
Adelaide (’54)
Jessica (’56)
Emily (’56)
Evie (’59), Evy (’59)
Mollie (’62), Molly (’64, ’75, ’79) (I wonder how many, if any, of these were born Mary?)
R0rry (’65)
Cor!nne (’67)
Penelope (’68, ’72)
K@rra (’78)
G3mma (’79)
M@ura (’79)

Some really interesting nicknames:

D0tsy (Dorothy?), and D0tsie (Z!lpha)
Fuzzy (Fl0ra)
T3x (B3tty)
Jo (J0an)
J0d0 (J0sephine)
M!bs (M@ryAnn3)
M!ckey (Myr@n)
B@mbi (Marl3n3)
Ch!ck (M@ry)
R0xie (Car0lyn)
Andy (Aur3l)
C0rky (C0r!nne)
N0ni (N0r33n)

And interesting given names:

Fl0ra x2 and a Fl0ranna (I’ve heard Flora recently as of interest to today’s namers)
D0e
Fa!th H0pe (first name/middle name or double first name, as far as I can tell)
Myr@n (a different woman named Myrna was on the same page, which makes more sense to me — maybe Myr@n was a typo?)
Aur3l
Vall!e
Charl0n
Tha!s

Interesting men’s names, or gender unknown (’98 and more recent):

R3mc0 (m)
J0n0 (m)
F!tzhugh (m)
Crest0n (gender unknown)

Interesting children’s names of the older- to mid- generations:

L!nden (daughter of ’67 alumna)
Av!s (daughter of ’71)
Pack3r (son of ’75)
Th0r (son of ’79)
Cab3l (son of ’81, brother of Tyl3r and Isab3ll3)
Z!ggy (daughter of ’81)
Ol!ve (daughter of ’86)

Grandchildren of olders or children of younger generations that jumped out at me:

R0rke (b) (grandson of ’67)
Ma!z!e, Lucy, and L!la (cousins, grandchildren of ’71)
Warr3n (grandson of ’78)
T0b!n (son of ’90)
Ya3l (daughter of ’90)
V!enna (daughter of ’93)
Ele@n0r and Cl@ra (daughters of ’98)
S3nna (daughter of ’99)
Penel0pe (daughter of ’08)

Were you surprised by any of these? Do you have any insight about some of the more unusual ones? Do you also (please say yes) scour your alumni mag(s)/those of others for baby names??