1880s Baby Names

3,546 names were given to children in the United States between 1880 and 1889, ranked below by how many.

A name's place is its total across those ten years. Names that appear in only some of the decade say so, because a name recorded once is a different fact from one recorded every year.

All Girls Boys Unisex

Rankings for

#433
Wilson Wilson rose and fell with a presidency, and birth records show it plainly — 129 American births in 1911, then 496 in 1912, climbing to 1,381 by 1918 and back to 590 by 1920.
660 in the 1880s
#434
Vernon Vernon is a Norman place name meaning a place of alders, from a Gaulish word — so a French town gave England a surname that America turned into a first name, three languages deep.
656 in the 1880s
#435
Irving Irving names a Scottish river valley, and it reached American use largely through one writer — Washington Irving, who gave English both Rip Van Winkle and the nickname Gotham for New York.
654 in the 1880s
#436
Marjorie Marjorie is a girl's name meaning pearl, an English form of Margaret whose modern spelling was pulled toward the herb marjoram by nothing more than a coincidence of sound.
654 in the 1880s
#437
Clayton Clayton means the settlement on clay, from an English place name that describes the ground it stood on.
653 in the 1880s
#438
Rudolph Rudolph means famous wolf, and the reindeer was invented to sell things — a Montgomery Ward copywriter wrote him for a giveaway booklet in 1939, which makes him a corporate creation rather than a folk one.
652 in the 1880s
#439
Myrtie
651 in the 1880s
#440
Meta
650 in the 1880s
#441
Phoebe Phoebe is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "bright" or "radiant."
646 in the 1880s
#442
Elma
643 in the 1880s
#443
Zella
639 in the 1880s
#444
Hubert Hubert means bright mind, and its saint is the patron of hunters — Saint Hubertus, whose stag with a crucifix between its antlers is the emblem on every bottle of Jägermeister.
634 in the 1880s
#445
Cecilia Cecilia is a girl's name of Latin origin from the Roman family name Caecilius, which derives from caecus, meaning blind.
630 in the 1880s
#446
Naomi Naomi is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "pleasantness," from No'omi.
629 in the 1880s
#447
Claudia Claudia means lame, and it comes from one of Rome's most powerful families.
626 in the 1880s
#448
Freda Freda means peace, and it is a fragment of several longer names — Winifred, Frederica and Alfreda all shorten to it, so which one a Freda descends from usually cannot be recovered.
624 in the 1880s
#449
Regina Regina is the Latin word for a queen, taken unchanged, and it is still the legal abbreviation in British courts — every criminal case against a defendant is formally Regina versus the accused.
621 in the 1880s
#450
Louie Louie is a boy's name of Germanic origin meaning "famous warrior."
620 in the 1880s
#451
Mose
618 in the 1880s
#452
Steve Steve is a boy's name, the short form of Steven or Stephen, meaning crown or garland.
618 in the 1880s
#453
Olivia Olivia is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "olive tree," used as the feminine form of Oliver.
618 in the 1880s
#454
Sherman
615 in the 1880s
#455
Orville
615 in the 1880s
#456
Monroe Monroe is a unisex name of Scottish origin meaning "mouth of the Roe" — a river in Ireland, not Scotland.
614 in the 1880s
#457
Austin Austin is a boy's name that began as a medieval English contraction of Augustine, meaning "venerable" or "majestic," from the Latin augustus.
609 in the 1880s
#458
Isabella Isabella is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "God is my oath," a Spanish and Italian form of Elizabeth that developed through Occitan and Old Spanish in the medieval period.
603 in the 1880s
#459
Bill Bill comes from William, and the B is the point — medieval English made pet names by rhyming, which is why Will became Bill, Rob became Bob and Rick became Dick.
600 in the 1880s
#460
Ivy Ivy is a girl's name of English origin naming the climbing evergreen plant, from the Old English ifig.
595 in the 1880s
#461
Bennie Bennie means son of the right hand, and Jacob renamed the child to get there — his dying mother called him son of my sorrow, and his father would not let the name stand.
593 in the 1880s
#462
Eugenia
593 in the 1880s
#463
Pete Pete means rock, and it began as a joke about a man's character — Jesus renames Simon as Cephas, the Aramaic for a stone, and the pun works in Greek but not in English.
590 in the 1880s
#464
Norma Norma is a girl's name that appears to have been invented for an opera — Bellini's Norma of 1831 — and it was the birth name of Marilyn Monroe, who appears elsewhere in these pages under the name that replaced it.
590 in the 1880s
#465
Augustus Augustus is a boy's name of Latin origin meaning "venerable" or "consecrated".
587 in the 1880s
#466
Fay
584 in the 1880s
#467
Dock
583 in the 1880s
#468
Cynthia Cynthia is a girl's name that began as a title for the moon goddess — it means she of Mount Cynthus, the peak on Delos where Artemis was said to have been born.
582 in the 1880s
#469
Ophelia Ophelia is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "help" or "benefit."
580 in the 1880s
#470
Elnora
579 in the 1880s
#471
Garfield
575 in the 1880s
#472
Madge
574 in the 1880s
#473
Bob Bob comes from Robert, and the B is not a corruption but a system — medieval English made pet names by rhyming, which is why Rob gave Bob, Will gave Bill and Rick gave Dick.
569 in the 1880s
#474
Millard
561 in the 1880s
#475
Emilie Emilie is a girl's name, the French and Danish form of Latin Aemilia, usually given as rival.
553 in the 1880s
#476
Jimmie Jimmie means supplanter, shortened from James, and about 17 percent of recorded births are female — a much higher share than most nickname-names of this shape, which usually resolve firmly to one side or the other.
553 in the 1880s
#477
Nathaniel Nathaniel is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "gift of God."
551 in the 1880s
#478
Donald Donald is a boy's name from the Scottish Gaelic Dòmhnall, meaning world ruler.
548 in the 1880s
#479
Vivian Vivian is a name of Latin origin meaning "alive" or "lively," from vivus.
547 in the 1880s
#480
Cordelia
546 in the 1880s

What Made a 1880s Name

Children in the United States were registered with it between 1880 and 1889. A name's position here is how many of them were.

Why Some Names Only Cover Part of the Decade

A name that appears in three of the ten years either arrived partway through or faded out — and either is more interesting than the total on its own. The statistics offices do not publish names given to very few children in a year, so a gap can also mean the count dropped below the threshold rather than to nothing.

Where to Go Next

Open any name to see its full curve — most of these have a hundred and forty years of it. Or compare the ends of the same measurement: the most popular names now and the rarest.