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

#275
Myrtle Myrtle means the evergreen shrub, and it was the plant of Aphrodite — carried by Greek and Roman brides long before the Victorians made it a name.
14,224 in the 1930s
#278
Violet Violet is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "purple," taken from viola, the Latin word for the purple flower.
13,927 in the 1930s
#279
Pearl Pearl is a girl's name taken from the gem, and it charts in all seven markets we track.
13,792 in the 1930s
#280
Rosalie Rosalie is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "rose."
13,763 in the 1930s
#281
Harriet Harriet is a girl's name of Germanic origin meaning "home ruler."
13,718 in the 1930s
#283
Annette Annette is a girl's name meaning grace, a French diminutive of Anne.
13,605 in the 1930s
#284
Joy Joy is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning exactly what it says, taken from the English word.
13,594 in the 1930s
#285
Naomi Naomi is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "pleasantness," from No'omi.
13,564 in the 1930s
#286
Charlene Charlene is a girl's name meaning free man, a feminine of Charles.
13,527 in the 1930s
#289
Claire Claire is a girl's name of French origin meaning "clear" or "bright," from the Latin clarus.
13,038 in the 1930s
#290
Mae Mae is a girl's name in France, generally read as a form of Mae or as a feminine of the Breton Mahé.
12,998 in the 1930s
#294
Suzanne Suzanne is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "lily," from shoshannah.
12,785 in the 1930s
#295
Rebecca Rebecca is a girl's name of Hebrew origin whose meaning is unsettled, and the standard gloss involves a rope for tying cattle.
12,679 in the 1930s
#296
Faye Faye is a girl's name of Old French origin meaning "fairy," from a word that traces back to the Fates of Roman religion.
12,666 in the 1930s
#297
Carrie Carrie is a girl's name, a pet form of Caroline meaning free man through Charles.
12,665 in the 1930s
#301
Dora Dora means gift, and it is the end of several names rather than a name in its own right — Theodora, Isidora and Dorothea all supply it, and Dorothy means the same thing with the halves reversed.
12,483 in the 1930s
#303
Rachel Rachel is a girl's name from Hebrew meaning ewe, borne by Jacob's wife in Genesis.
12,366 in the 1930s
#304
Rosie Rosie is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "rose."
12,186 in the 1930s
#305
Emily Emily is a girl's name of Latin origin, from the Roman family name Aemilius.
11,969 in the 1930s
#307
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.
11,823 in the 1930s
#312
Maureen Maureen is the Irish Máirín, a diminutive of Máire, which is itself the Irish form of Mary.
11,488 in the 1930s
#313
Alberta Alberta means noble and bright, and a Canadian province carries it — Alberta was named for Queen Victoria's fourth daughter, whose full name was Louise Caroline Alberta.
11,445 in the 1930s
#316
Cora Cora is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "maiden," from kore.
11,328 in the 1930s
#317
Stella Stella is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "star."
11,288 in the 1930s
#319
Lula Lula has no single parent — it shortens Louise, Lucille and Tallulah alike, and our data marks it reviving, ranking 1306th in England and Wales against 1938th in the United States.
11,159 in the 1930s
#322
Sheila Sheila is the Irish form of Cecilia, meaning blind — and parents outside Ireland should know it became Australian slang for a woman in the nineteenth century, which is why it barely charts there.
11,008 in the 1930s
#324
Caroline Caroline is a girl's name of Germanic origin meaning "free man," the French feminine of Charles by way of the Latin Carolus.
10,867 in the 1930s
#325
Carmen Carmen has two unrelated sources — the Latin word for a song, and a Spanish Marian title from Mount Carmel in Israel.
10,852 in the 1930s
#326
Verna Verna means springtime, from the Latin for spring — and our data marks it reviving, though from a low base at 3464th in the United States on a 1918 peak of 1,885.
10,682 in the 1930s
#327
Glenda Glenda is a twentieth-century Welsh invention rather than a traditional name — it joins two ordinary Welsh adjectives, and it does not appear in the historical record before about 1900.
10,630 in the 1930s
#328
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."
10,610 in the 1930s
#330
Lola Lola is a girl's name of Spanish origin meaning "sorrows."
10,456 in the 1930s
#332
Hattie Hattie is a girl's name of Germanic origin meaning "home ruler."
10,329 in the 1930s
#333
Myrna
10,260 in the 1930s
#335
Gwendolyn Gwendolyn means white ring or blessed ring, from Welsh, and the second element is genuinely a ring — a torc or armlet, which was the standard Celtic mark of rank.
10,179 in the 1930s
#336
Ramona Ramona means protecting counsel, and a novel made it — Helen Hunt Jackson wrote Ramona in 1884 to expose the treatment of Native Californians, and readers took the romance and ignored the argument.
10,170 in the 1930s
#337
Rosemarie Rosemarie looks like Rose plus Marie, and as a name it is — but the herb rosemary has nothing to do with either, and the resemblance is one of the neatest coincidences in naming.
10,140 in the 1930s
#341
Jeannette Jeannette means God is gracious, a French double diminutive of Jeanne — and the -ette ending is doing the same work twice, since Jeanne is already a feminine of Jean.
9,821 in the 1930s
#342
Erma Erma is the only name in this group recorded in a single market across its whole history — every one of its 55,187 births is American, and it charts nowhere else in any year we hold.
9,778 in the 1930s
#346
Genevieve Genevieve is a girl's name of Gaulish origin whose meaning is not settled.
9,706 in the 1930s
#348
Nina Nina is a girl's name with several unrelated origins.
9,702 in the 1930s
#349
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.
9,695 in the 1930s
#350
Patty Patty belonged to Martha before it belonged to Patricia — the pet form was reassigned in the twentieth century, one of several nicknames in English that quietly changed parents.
9,691 in the 1930s
#351
Fannie Fannie means Frenchwoman, shortened from Frances, and it left English-speaking use for reasons of slang rather than fashion — the word acquired a sense the name could not survive.
9,640 in the 1930s
#352
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.
9,568 in the 1930s
#354
Diana Diana is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "divine" or "heavenly," the Roman goddess of the hunt and the moon.
9,512 in the 1930s
#355
Hilda Hilda means battle, and it is the surviving fragment of longer Germanic names — Hildegard, Brunhild and Matilda all contain it, and the element outlived most of the compounds it belonged to.
9,492 in the 1930s
#358
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.
9,352 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.