1920s Baby Names

13,525 names were given to children in the United States between 1920 and 1929, 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

#193
Mabel Mabel is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "lovable."
24,591 in the 1920s
#194
Carol Carol is a girl's name with two independent sources: a short form of Caroline, and the word for a joyful song.
24,528 in the 1920s
#195
Martin Martin is a boy's name of Latin origin meaning "of Mars," borne by Saint Martin of Tours, whose cloak gave Europe the word chapel.
24,406 in the 1920s
#196
Milton Milton means the mill settlement, and there is a second and quite separate source meaning the middle settlement — two entirely different Old English place names that ended up producing exactly the same modern spelling.
24,357 in the 1920s
#197
Janet Janet is a girl's name, a Scottish diminutive of Jane meaning God is gracious.
24,020 in the 1920s
#198
Cecil Cecil means blind, from a Roman family name, and the saint who made it famous is patron of music on the strength of one ambiguous line in her own account of her wedding day.
24,003 in the 1920s
#199
Bonnie Bonnie is a girl's name of Scots origin meaning "pretty" or "fine."
23,885 in the 1920s
#200
Jesse Jesse is a name of Hebrew origin whose meaning is debated.
23,610 in the 1920s
#201
Dale Dale is a name from the Old English word for a valley, and like Craig and Heather it is a plain landscape noun rather than a compound.
23,543 in the 1920s
#202
Georgia Georgia is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "farmer" or "worker of the earth," the feminine of George, from ge, earth, and ergon, work.
23,403 in the 1920s
#203
Geneva Geneva is not named after the Swiss city — it is a form of Genevieve, whose own meaning is unsettled, and the city's name comes from a Celtic word for a bend or estuary entirely separately.
23,383 in the 1920s
#204
Velma Velma is an invented name with no root at all — it appears in nineteenth-century America built on the pattern of Selma and Thelma, and the Germanic derivations offered for it were attached afterwards.
23,020 in the 1920s
#205
Lena Lena is a girl's name used as a short form of Helena, Magdalena and Elena, so it usually carries the sense "light" or "torch."
22,931 in the 1920s
#206
Mae Mae is a girl's name in France, generally read as a form of Mae or as a feminine of the Breton Mahé.
22,906 in the 1920s
#207
Maria Maria is a girl's name of Hebrew origin, the Latin and Greek form of Miryam.
22,895 in the 1920s
#208
Carolyn Carolyn is a girl's name, an English elaboration of Caroline meaning free man through Charles.
22,824 in the 1920s
#209
Jennie Jennie began as a Scottish pet form of Jean and only later attached to Jennifer, which is a Cornish name with no connection to it.
22,711 in the 1920s
#210
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.
22,495 in the 1920s
#211
Christine Christine is a girl's name from the Latin for a follower of Christ, the French form of Christina.
22,439 in the 1920s
#212
Arlene Arlene has no established origin at all — it appears in the nineteenth century with no traceable parent name, and the Irish pledge reading usually given for it belongs to a different name entirely.
22,017 in the 1920s
#213
Harvey Harvey is a boy's name of Breton origin meaning "battle worthy."
21,966 in the 1920s
#214
Roger Roger is a boy's name from Germanic elements meaning famous spear.
21,928 in the 1920s
#215
Peggy Peggy is a girl's name meaning pearl, a pet form of Margaret by way of Meg.
21,928 in the 1920s
#216
Marguerite Marguerite is a girl's name meaning pearl, and it is also the French word for the daisy — so the name carries a flower and a gemstone at once.
21,820 in the 1920s
#217
Opal Opal means the gem, and it is the only major stone whose name may come from Sanskrit — upala, a precious stone, reaching Greek and Latin through the trade routes rather than from a European root.
21,797 in the 1920s
#218
Victor Victor is a boy's name of Latin origin meaning "conqueror."
21,676 in the 1920s
#219
Sara Sara is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "princess" or "noblewoman."
21,165 in the 1920s
#220
Loretta Loretta comes from an Italian shrine, not from the laurel — Loreto is the town where the Holy House of Nazareth was said to have been carried by angels.
21,133 in the 1920s
#221
Benjamin Benjamin is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "son of the right hand," from Binyamin.
21,122 in the 1920s
#222
Sam Sam is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "God has heard," a short form of Samuel.
21,107 in the 1920s
#223
Wallace Wallace means foreigner, and the irony is complete — it is the Anglo-Saxon word for the Britons who were there first, so Scotland's national hero carries a name meaning outsider in his own country.
21,055 in the 1920s
#224
Ronald Ronald is a boy's name from the Old Norse Rögnvaldr, meaning ruler's counsel, brought to Scotland by Norse settlement.
21,005 in the 1920s
#225
Rosa Rosa is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "rose."
20,957 in the 1920s
#226
Harriet Harriet is a girl's name of Germanic origin meaning "home ruler."
20,927 in the 1920s
#227
Muriel Muriel means bright sea, from Gaelic, and it reached English twice — once through Irish and Scottish settlement and once through Breton, carried back across the Channel by the Normans.
20,749 in the 1920s
#228
Eunice Eunice means good victory, and she is named in the New Testament as Timothy's mother — one of very few women whose faith Paul credits by name, alongside her own mother Lois.
20,485 in the 1920s
#229
Eddie Eddie is a boy's name, the pet form of Edward or Edwin, meaning wealth.
20,442 in the 1920s
#230
Allen Allen is a boy's name whose meaning is genuinely unknown — rock, handsome and deer have all been proposed from an unidentified Breton source.
20,347 in the 1920s
#231
Gene Gene means well-born, shortened from Eugene — and it has nothing at all to do with genes in biology, which is a separate word coined in 1909 from a different Greek root entirely, by a Danish botanist.
19,936 in the 1920s
#232
Jeanette Jeanette means God is gracious, a French double diminutive of Jeanne.
19,833 in the 1920s
#233
Arnold Arnold means eagle power, and England and Wales ranks it 631st on 59 births — well above the United States at 1478th, which is not what the name's twentieth-century American associations would predict.
19,693 in the 1920s
#234
Blanche Blanche means white, and its revival is entirely French — 252nd in France on 220 births against 6874th in the United States.
19,669 in the 1920s
#235
Jerry Jerry is a name that serves as the short form of at least three unrelated names — Jeremiah from Hebrew, Gerald and Gerard from Germanic — so its meaning depends entirely on which one a family had in mind.
19,626 in the 1920s
#236
Carrie Carrie is a girl's name, a pet form of Caroline meaning free man through Charles.
19,279 in the 1920s
#237
Jimmie Jimmie means supplanter, shortened from James, and about 17 percent of the births in our records are female — a much higher share than most nickname-names of this shape, which usually resolve firmly to one side or the other.
19,130 in the 1920s
#238
Emily Emily is a girl's name of Latin origin, from the Roman family name Aemilius.
18,807 in the 1920s
#239
Willard Willard means bold desire, and both halves are Germanic words about force of will — it is a surname from a personal name, and its American use is almost entirely nineteenth-century onward.
18,692 in the 1920s
#240
Beulah Beulah means married, and it is a place before it is a person — Isaiah calls the restored land Beulah, and Bunyan turned it into the country just short of heaven in Pilgrim's Progress.
18,685 in the 1920s

What made a 1920s name

Nothing about the sound of it. A name is on this page because children in the United States were registered with it between 1920 and 1929, and its position is simply how many. Every list of "1920s names" you will find elsewhere is somebody's sense of the period; this one is the register.

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.