I think "dated" is one of the most useless criticisms of a name
Every time names like Heather, Jessica, Melissa, Kevin or Brian come up, someone inevitably says they feel "dated."
And... okay? Dated to when?
Most names are attached to a generation at some point. Hazel and Mabel spent decades sounding like somebody's grandmother before suddenly becoming adorable again. Today's perfectly current names are going to scream "born in the 2020s" eventually too.
I think people sometimes use "dated" when what they really mean is "I remember adults with this name from when I was a kid," which isn't the same thing as the name being bad.
Honestly, there's something kind of nice about meeting a little kid with a name that isn't trying very hard to signal what year they were born.
Obviously some names had such a massive peak that the association is hard to shake. But I'd still rather hear "this feels very 1987" than treat that as an automatic rejection.
What names do you think are considered dated right now but are actually perfectly usable?