“Linda? That’s my aunt’s name!”
I probably wasn’t even out of my teens before I’d lost count of the number of times a cute boy said this to me. “You have an old name because you had old parents,” my older sister flatly told me once. My friends more tactfully insisted that “No, the ‘y’ makes it a totally different name!”
But my sister wasn’t wrong: I’m a Gen X Lynda with a name beloved by the parents of baby boomers and even the silent generation. These days, the name has been reduced to a frumpy archetype. How did a name that was the equivalent of a TikTok sensation of its day become so relentlessly uncool?
Lindas are getting a bad rap
The “y” is the only thing standing between me and the Lindas of the world. As a Linda, I’m an episode-long joke on “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” in which everyone is confounded by a baby named Linda because Lindas are adult women who work in HR. There’s also the bossy busybody of the “Listen Linda” meme (there but for the grace of Karen go I), which originated with a Linda recording her three-year-old son repeatedly insisting “Listen, Linda” with all of the exasperated patience he can muster faced with the implacable bureaucracy that a Linda embodies. As a Lynda, I have plausible deniability.
The comedic success of both the TV show and the meme relies on the confidence that we’ve all noticed certain things about people named Linda and that we’ll all get the joke, and we do.
“Who’s Linda? Your mom’s friend?” Linda is the type of person who carries SlimFast in her purse and gets mad when she can’t find her keys. Linda says things like “Mondays,” with that little rueful head shake, you know the one. Of course she does. And Linda’s meddling opinions likely need to be shut down: Listen, Linda.
We all know this Linda, but why? How did this extraordinarily popular name become this frumpy archetype?
The name isn’t poised for a comeback — yet
One thing all the characters in the Kimmy Schmidt episode agree on — including the five middle-aged Lindas who all work in HR at the same company — Linda definitely can’t be a baby.
These days, they aren’t wrong. In the US, the name Linda began its sharp rise in popularity in the late 1930s, peaked in the late 1940s, and declined dramatically throughout the 1960s and 1970s to become one of the unlikeliest names given to babies today.
This is my name, and I’m keeping it
Of course, we Lyndas with a “y” were always somewhat rare, which is why I’ve always side-eyed HR departments, try not to make everything my business, and can solemnly swear not a sip of SlimFast has ever passed my lips. I do get mad when I can’t find my keys though.
I try not to think much about the fact that I was almost an Elizabeth as I’m convinced my life would have taken a completely different trajectory. Elizabeth surely would have been several inches taller than my five-foot-one-inch frame and would probably have had a decent sense of direction. She’d have published a novel in her twenties and probably landed on one of those “30 Under 30” lists.
However unenamoured I have always been of my name, I’ve also never considered changing it. Wouldn’t that just leave me with another name I’d also get tired of, only I’d have no one but myself to blame?
There’s another reason I’m kind of attached to Lynda though. My father loved the name and had always wanted a daughter named Linda. My mother suggested the “y” addition just so it would be a little different. The name meant something to them even if it seems slightly ridiculous to me. Now that they’re both gone, it feels like a lasting thread of connection with them both.
That and the fact that it’s Lynda with a “y.” I’m not one of those Lindas other people talk about — at least not as long as I can find my keys.
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