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

#817
Simon Simon is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "he has heard," borne by the apostle Peter before his renaming.
2,129 in the 1930s
#818
Rene Rene is a name from the Latin for reborn, given at baptism to mark spiritual rebirth.
2,128 in the 1930s
#819
Hannah Hannah is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "grace" or "favor," from Channah.
2,126 in the 1930s
#820
Francine Francine means Frenchwoman, and it is a French diminutive of a name that already means French — so it reads as a small French person, which is circular in a way few names manage.
2,125 in the 1930s
#821
Corine
2,124 in the 1930s
#822
Jannie
2,109 in the 1930s
#823
Coy
2,104 in the 1930s
#824
Chris Chris shortens two unrelated Greek names — Christopher, which means bearing Christ, and Christine, which means belonging to Christ.
2,102 in the 1930s
#825
Concetta
2,087 in the 1930s
#826
Daryl Daryl completes a set of three — Darrell, Darryl and Daryl are one Norman place name split across three spellings, and all three appear in our gap band, carrying about 328,000 births between them.
2,079 in the 1930s
#827
Beryl
2,053 in the 1930s
#828
Elouise
2,048 in the 1930s
#829
Salvador Salvador means savior, and it names a country and an ocean crossing — El Salvador is the only nation named directly for Christ, and San Salvador was the first island Columbus reached.
2,037 in the 1930s
#830
Van
2,036 in the 1930s
#831
Helena Helena is a girl's name of Greek origin whose meaning is unresolved, and its saint is credited with finding the True Cross.
2,035 in the 1930s
#832
Lilly Lilly is a girl's name of Latin origin taken from the flower, from lilium.
2,034 in the 1930s
#833
Matilda Matilda is a girl's name of Germanic origin meaning "mighty in battle."
2,033 in the 1930s
#834
Emanuel Emanuel began as a sign rather than a name — Isaiah tells Ahaz that a child will be called God with us as proof of a prophecy, and the phrase became a personal name only afterward.
2,017 in the 1930s
#835
Lessie
2,009 in the 1930s
#836
Gus
1,990 in the 1930s
#837
Jenny Jenny began as a pet form of Jane, not Jennifer — the two attached to each other only in the twentieth century, and Jennifer was almost unknown outside Cornwall before 1900.
1,989 in the 1930s
#838
Callie Callie is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "beautiful."
1,982 in the 1930s
#839
Scott Scott is a boy's name meaning a Scot, from the surname given to people from Scotland.
1,976 in the 1930s
#840
Evangeline Evangeline is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "bearer of good news."
1,973 in the 1930s
#841
Al
1,970 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
#843
Bertie
1,962 in the 1930s
#844
Armando Armando means army man, and it is the same name as Herman — one Germanic compound that reached Spanish through the Visigoths and English through the Normans, ending up unrecognisably different.
1,961 in the 1930s
#845
Rodger
1,959 in the 1930s
#846
Vernell
1,950 in the 1930s
#847
Armand Armand is a boy's name of Germanic origin meaning "army man," the French form of Herman, borne by the cardinal who built the centralized French state.
1,949 in the 1930s
#848
Ophelia Ophelia is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "help" or "benefit."
1,948 in the 1930s
#849
Craig Craig is a boy's name from the Gaelic word for a rock or crag, and one of the few names that is a plain landscape noun rather than a compound.
1,946 in the 1930s
#850
Jake Jake is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "supplanter," a short form of Jacob that became a name in its own right.
1,943 in the 1930s
#851
Buford
1,942 in the 1930s
#852
Alfredo Alfredo means counsel of the elves, and the elves were taken seriously — Anglo-Saxon naming treated them as beings whose advice was worth invoking, not as decoration for a children's story.
1,942 in the 1930s
#853
Dorris
1,936 in the 1930s
#854
Emory Emory is a unisex name of Germanic origin, a variant of Emery.
1,934 in the 1930s
#855
Sterling Sterling is a unit of money that became a name, and the coin was probably named for a bird — the little star on early Norman pennies gives one account, and a starling stamped on them gives the other.
1,930 in the 1930s
#856
Rolland
1,924 in the 1930s
#857
Barney
1,916 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
#861
Truman
1,891 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
#864
Dudley
1,887 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.