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 this group, 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 recorded births 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

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.