The trendiest baby name of all time is hardly used today.

Charlotte, Olivia, Amelia – they’re certainly popular names at the moment. But they don’t even come close to the trendiest name of all time.

That honour goes to none other than Linda, a ranking which sure came as a surprise to us.

Yes, Linda experienced a surge in popularity so great in one year, one in every 20 baby girls in the US were given the name.

Listen: Holly Wainwright and Andrew Daddo give a nod to the near-extinct name Nigel, on our podcast for imperfect parents. Post continues after. 

Biotechnologist and blogger David Taylor crunched the numbers and presented them on website Proofreader. To come up with the trendiest name, Taylor looked at which names had the sharpest rise and decline coupled with the greatest height in popularity.

He found that in 1947, the name Linda skyrocketed in popularity to make up for a whopping 5.5 per cent of girls in the US.

Other trendy names over the years have been Brittany and Ashley, peaking in the 1980s and 90s, Debra, reaching popular heights in the 1960s, and Shirley in the 1930s (no doubt thanks in part to child star Shirley Temple).

As for the root of Linda’s popularity, well Taylor attributes that to a hit song of the same name by musician Jack Lawrence, which topped the charts in 1947.

Since then famous Lindas have included, Linda Blair (who played the lead character in The Exorcist), Linda Cardellini, Linda Evangelista and Grammy-winner Linda Ronstadt.

Meanwhile, the trendiest boy's name in the US of all time, which at its peak in the 1970s accounted for about 3.5 per cent of boys, was Jason, followed by Mark and then Dewey, Grover and Woodrow (?) around the turn of the 20th century.

So if you're called Linda, and you've been looking for a claim to fame, having the trendiest name ever is surely a contender.