1930s Baby Names

6,742 names were given to children in the United States between 1930 and 1939, 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

#840
Evangeline Evangeline is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "bearer of good news."
1,973 in the 1930s
#842
Amanda Amanda is a girl's name from the Latin for she who must be loved, and one of the few names on this site that can be dated to a specific literary invention — Colley Cibber used it for a character in his 1696 play Love's Last Shift.
1,965 in the 1930s
#848
Ophelia Ophelia is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "help" or "benefit."
1,948 in the 1930s
#858
Meredith Meredith is a Welsh man's name that turned female in America — 95 percent of the births in our records are female, and the Welsh Maredudd it comes from was borne by princes of Deheubarth.
1,913 in the 1930s
#859
Aline Aline means noble, worn down from Adelaide through Adeline — three names that are the same word at three stages of erosion, and France ranks it 292nd on 185 births.
1,908 in the 1930s
#860
Pansy
1,896 in the 1930s
#862
Mercedes Mercedes is a plural, and it means wages before it means mercies — the Latin merces is payment, and the Spanish title Our Lady of Mercies turned a commercial word into a devotional one.
1,889 in the 1930s
#863
Winona
1,888 in the 1930s
#865
Laurel Laurel names the plant directly, which sets it apart from Lora and Loren on this site — those reach the laurel through a Roman town, while this one is simply the tree.
1,875 in the 1930s
#867
Pamela Pamela is a girl's name invented by a poet: Sir Philip Sidney coined it for his Arcadia around 1580, apparently from Greek elements meaning all sweetness.
1,873 in the 1930s
#868
Retha
1,868 in the 1930s
#869
Eliza Eliza is a girl's name that began as a short form of Elizabeth, and so means "God is my oath," from the Hebrew Elisheva.
1,857 in the 1930s
#871
Rosalind
1,855 in the 1930s
#872
Marva
1,854 in the 1930s
#877
Lorena Lorena is a place before it is a person — Lorraine is the land of Lothar, a Frankish king whose kingdom was carved out of Charlemagne's empire and named after him directly.
1,841 in the 1930s
#879
Rosalyn
1,831 in the 1930s
#883
Ima
1,817 in the 1930s
#884
Maude Maude belonged to the woman who nearly became England's first ruling queen — the Empress Matilda fought her cousin for the throne through nineteen years of civil war the chroniclers called the Anarchy.
1,810 in the 1930s
#892
Kaye
1,770 in the 1930s
#893
Roxie
1,768 in the 1930s
#898
Iona Iona is a girl's name taken from the Hebridean island where Columba founded his monastery — and the island's name exists because a medieval scribe misread a letter.
1,747 in the 1930s
#901
Delphine Delphine means of Delphi, and the dolphin reading is not a coincidence — the Greeks connected the oracle site and the animal through a word for a womb, so both descend from the same root.
1,740 in the 1930s
#902
Rosalee
1,739 in the 1930s
#903
Nita
1,728 in the 1930s
#904
Katharine Katharine is the spelling closest to the Greek, and that Greek has never been explained — the pure gloss comes from a later association with katharos, clean, applied long after the name existed.
1,724 in the 1930s
#905
Ester
1,721 in the 1930s
#912
Twila
1,698 in the 1930s
#914
Lorine
1,693 in the 1930s
#916
Claudine Claudine is a French girl's name meaning lame, from a Roman family name.
1,686 in the 1930s
#918
Shirlee
1,685 in the 1930s
#921
Roslyn
1,679 in the 1930s
#922
Lelia
1,674 in the 1930s
#929
Zelda
1,655 in the 1930s
#930
Sonya Sonya means wisdom, and the Greek word behind it named a divine attribute before it named a person — Constantinople's great church was dedicated to Holy Wisdom, not to any saint called Sophia.
1,655 in the 1930s
#932
Reta
1,651 in the 1930s
#933
Denise Denise is a girl's name, the French feminine of Denis, and like it traces to Dionysus, the Greek god of wine.
1,651 in the 1930s
#934
Peggie
1,648 in the 1930s
#935
Susanne
1,646 in the 1930s
#936
Elena Elena is a girl's name of Greek origin, the Italian, Spanish, and Russian form of Helen.
1,645 in the 1930s
#937
Lucia Lucia is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "light," the feminine of Lucius from lux.
1,643 in the 1930s
#938
Ardith
1,642 in the 1930s
#941
Hester
1,631 in the 1930s
#943
Madelyn Madelyn is a girl's name and a modern American respelling of Madeline, which descends from Magdalene — meaning "of Magdala," a town on the Sea of Galilee.
1,628 in the 1930s
#944
Sydney Sydney is a name from a French place name — Saint-Denis, contracted by English speakers — and the Australian city was named after a man who bore it.
1,625 in the 1930s
#945
Leota
1,622 in the 1930s
#946
Alene
1,618 in the 1930s
#948
Stephanie Stephanie is a girl's name from the Greek for crown or garland, the feminine of Stephen.
1,603 in the 1930s
#951
Ladonna
1,587 in the 1930s

What made a 1930s name

Nothing about the sound of it. A name is on this page because children in the United States were registered with it between 1930 and 1939, and its position is simply how many. Every list of "1930s 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.