1930s Baby Names

12,733 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

#433
Clifton Clifton means the settlement by the cliff, and it is the same first element as Clifford — one describes a ford below the cliff and the other the farm on top of it.
6,895 in the 1930s
#434
Maggie Maggie is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "pearl."
6,870 in the 1930s
#435
Jacquelyn Jacquelyn means supplanter, and the chain is long — it is an American respelling of Jacqueline, the French feminine of Jacques, which is James, which is Jacob.
6,811 in the 1930s
#436
Juan Juan is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "God is gracious."
6,781 in the 1930s
#437
Oliver Oliver is a boy's name that entered England with the Normans and has a disputed origin.
6,760 in the 1930s
#438
Clinton Clinton means the settlement on the hill, from an English place name — and the two American presidents who carried it did so by adoption and by surname, not by descent from the place.
6,748 in the 1930s
#439
Lydia Lydia is a girl's name meaning "woman from Lydia," an ancient kingdom in what is now western Turkey.
6,700 in the 1930s
#440
Barry Barry is a boy's name from an Irish surname generally traced to a word for a spear, though a Welsh island gives a competing route.
6,671 in the 1930s
#441
Marianne Marianne is the personification of the French Republic, and her bust stands in every town hall in France — so the name carries a civic weight in one market that it has nowhere else.
6,610 in the 1930s
#442
Angela Angela is a girl's name from the Greek for messenger, the word that also gives us angel.
6,554 in the 1930s
#443
Nelson Nelson means son of Neil, and the admiral made it a given name — it was a surname until Trafalgar, after which parents across the English-speaking world started using it as a first name outright.
6,524 in the 1930s
#444
Salvatore Salvatore means savior, and it is a title rather than a description — Italian Catholic families gave it as a devotional name naming Christ's role directly, in the way Spanish families use Jesús.
6,499 in the 1930s
#445
Ira Ira means watchful, and it is 12 percent female on record despite being a man's name in the Hebrew Bible — one of David's priests carries it in Samuel.
6,495 in the 1930s
#446
Jon Jon is a boy's name meaning God is gracious, and it is both an English shortening of Jonathan and the standard Scandinavian and Catalan form of John — two routes to the same three letters.
6,438 in the 1930s
#447
Fay
6,435 in the 1930s
#448
Gayle Gayle carries 67,694 lifetime births and now charts in no market — one of the largest names on this site to have fallen entirely out of current use.
6,374 in the 1930s
#449
Alex Alex is a name of Greek origin meaning "defender of mankind."
6,371 in the 1930s
#450
Sadie Sadie is a girl's name that began as a pet form of Sarah, the Hebrew name meaning "princess" or "noblewoman."
6,348 in the 1930s
#451
Leland Leland means fallow land — ground deliberately left unplowed for a season.
6,319 in the 1930s
#452
Matthew Matthew is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "gift of Yahweh," from Mattityahu.
6,268 in the 1930s
#453
Wendell Wendell names a people rather than a quality — the Wends were the Slavic populations of eastern Germany, so the name records who someone's neighbors thought they were rather than anything they did.
6,266 in the 1930s
#454
Victoria Victoria is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "victory."
6,261 in the 1930s
#455
Lorene Lorene reaches the laurel by the long way round — Laurentum was a town named for its bay trees, and the personal name says which town someone came from rather than which plant crowned them.
6,217 in the 1930s
#456
Wilbert Wilbert means bright will, and it is one of a small set of names joining desire to brightness — the same beorht that ends Albert, Robert and Gilbert, on a first element meaning wanting something.
6,215 in the 1930s
#457
Nadine Nadine looks entirely French and is Russian underneath — it is Nadezhda, the ordinary Russian word for hope, borrowed into French and given a French ending.
6,207 in the 1930s
#458
Reba
6,205 in the 1930s
#459
Julius Julius means downy-bearded, and the family claimed descent from Venus — the Julii traced themselves to Iulus, son of Aeneas, which is the genealogy Virgil wrote the Aeneid to dignify.
6,167 in the 1930s
#460
Doyle
6,092 in the 1930s
#461
Cleo Cleo is a name of Greek origin meaning "glory" or "fame."
6,059 in the 1930s
#462
Claudia Claudia means lame, and it comes from one of Rome's most powerful families.
6,052 in the 1930s
#463
Mona Mona in Mona Lisa is not a name — it contracts ma donna, my lady, so the painting's title is closer to Madam Lisa than to anyone called Mona.
6,032 in the 1930s
#464
Edmund Edmund was England's patron saint before George — Edmund the Martyr, king of East Anglia, was killed by a Viking army in 869 and held that position for some three hundred years before a crusader saint displaced him.
6,000 in the 1930s
#465
Amelia Amelia is a girl's name most often explained as a blend of two older names: the Germanic Amalia, meaning "work" or "industrious," and the Latin Emilia, from the Roman family name Aemilius.
5,998 in the 1930s
#466
Rex Rex means king, and it is the plain Latin nominative — which makes it the pair to Regis, the genitive meaning of the king.
5,961 in the 1930s
#467
Myron Myron means myrrh, and the resin was worth its weight in gold — traded up the incense routes from southern Arabia, used for embalming, and one of the three gifts in Matthew.
5,953 in the 1930s
#468
Deanna Deanna was popularized by a stage name — the actress born Edna Mae Durbin was renamed Deanna Durbin in 1936, and American births rose from almost nothing to a peak of 4,331 in 1970.
5,859 in the 1930s
#469
Myra Myra was invented by a poet — Fulke Greville coined it around 1580, probably by rearranging Mary, and every later meaning attached to it was supplied after the fact.
5,858 in the 1930s
#470
Orville
5,855 in the 1930s
#471
Henrietta Henrietta named a American state — Maryland was chartered for Henrietta Maria, queen to Charles I, so a French princess's middle name sits on the map of the United States.
5,828 in the 1930s
#472
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.
5,825 in the 1930s
#473
Ora Ora has three unrelated sources — the Latin imperative meaning pray, the Hebrew for light, and an Albanian word for hour — and it is reviving across three markets.
5,809 in the 1930s
#474
Ivan Ivan is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "God is gracious."
5,798 in the 1930s
#475
Jewel Jewel may descend from the Latin for a joke — the leading account traces it through Old French to jocus, a game or plaything, which would make the most precious thing in the house a toy by origin.
5,745 in the 1930s
#476
Estelle Estelle means star, and France and the United States rank it within 55 places of each other — 518th and 573rd — which is unusually close for a French name in an English-speaking market.
5,722 in the 1930s
#477
Jesus Jesus is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "the Lord is salvation."
5,660 in the 1930s
#478
Carlos Carlos is a boy's name of Germanic origin meaning "free man."
5,654 in the 1930s
#479
Loren Loren means from Laurentum, a town rather than a plant — the laurel reading came second, and the town itself was probably named for its laurels, so the connection is real but runs the long way round.
5,623 in the 1930s
#480
Perry Perry means at the pear tree, from an English place name — and it is reviving, at 1,373rd in the United States and 1,681st in England and Wales.
5,599 in the 1930s

What Made a 1930s Name

Children in the United States were registered with it between 1930 and 1939. 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.