Megan has 439,765 SSA records — making it one of the most-used names in this entire database — and peaked in 1990, the year it was the fourth most popular girl name in America. At rank 761 today, it's well past its apex, but the question isn't whether Megan was popular. It's whether it's ready for a comeback.
A Genuinely Welsh Name
Megan is a Welsh diminutive of Margaret, which traces back through Greek Margarites to a word meaning pearl. The -an ending is characteristically Welsh, the same suffix that softens Margaret into something distinctly Celtic. In Wales, Megan has been a girl's name for centuries, not a 1980s trend. The American wave obscured that heritage — when a name becomes too popular too fast, its roots tend to get covered over. Browse Celtic names and you'll find Megan's company: Rhiannon, Bronwen, Cerys, names that carry real linguistic history from the Welsh tradition.
The 1990 Association
Megan peaked at a specific cultural moment — early 1990s, height of the yuppie era, a name that felt modern and fresh then. Every Megan born in 1988-1995 is now in their 30s, which creates the generational-name problem: parents who were children when Megan was ubiquitous might not want to give it to their own daughter. That's the standard mechanism by which generation-defining names fall off and then, roughly 40 years later, begin their revival. By that math, Megan's comeback window opens somewhere in the 2030s. Compare Megan and Morgan, both Welsh, both 1990s peaks, different trajectories now.
The Case for Megan Right Now
Parents who want a name that is easy to spell, easy to pronounce, has genuine cultural roots, and is currently unfashionable enough to feel individual, Megan is a strong option. It carries no baggage that isn't also shared by half the parent cohort of today's young children, which is a different kind of cultural saturation than, say, a name associated with a single media character. 1990s names are starting to look fresh again in the same way 1970s names did in the 2010s.