1940s Baby Names

4,671 names were given to children in the United States between 1940 and 1949, 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

#320
Eric Eric is a boy's name of Old Norse origin meaning "eternal ruler" or "sole ruler."
15,212 in the 1940s
#321
Milton Milton means the mill settlement, and there is a second and quite separate source meaning the middle settlement — two entirely different Old English place names that ended up producing exactly the same modern spelling.
14,937 in the 1940s
#323
Randy Randy is a boy's name, the short form of Randall or Randolph, meaning shield-wolf.
14,906 in the 1940s
#326
Manuel Manuel is a boy's name meaning God is with us, the Spanish short form of Emmanuel.
14,283 in the 1940s
#327
Jan Jan is 66 percent female on record because two unrelated uses collide — it is the ordinary man's name for John across Dutch, Polish and Czech, and a woman's short form of Janet and Janice in English.
14,061 in the 1940s
#336
Roland Roland is a boy's name meaning famous land, and its bearer is the hero of France's national epic — a knight who dies at Roncevaux because he is too proud to blow his horn for help.
13,114 in the 1940s
#337
Ted Ted is a boy's name that serves two unrelated names at once, and it exists because medieval English moved the n from "mine Edward."
13,052 in the 1940s
#340
Dwight Dwight descends from Dionysus, the Greek god of wine — through the medieval woman's name Diot, a pet form of Dionysia, which is an unusually indirect route for a masculine surname.
12,887 in the 1940s
#341
Claude Claude is a name from a Roman family name meaning lame, one of very few widely used names with an unflattering literal sense.
12,886 in the 1940s
#343
Wesley Wesley is a boy's name of English origin meaning "western meadow," from the Old English west and leah.
12,614 in the 1940s
#346
Sam Sam is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "God has heard," a short form of Samuel.
12,456 in the 1940s
#347
Neil Neil means champion or cloud, from Irish, and it traveled to Iceland with the Vikings and back to England with the Normans — so the English Neil arrived by way of Scandinavia and France.
12,444 in the 1940s
#349
Donnie Donnie ranks 563rd in Ireland and 1,804th in the United States, so the country with a fraction of the births ranks it three times higher — a pattern we see when a name goes home.
12,291 in the 1940s
#351
Scott Scott is a boy's name meaning a Scot, from the surname given to people from Scotland.
12,192 in the 1940s
#357
Dave Dave ranks 2,217th in England and Wales and 2,469th in the United States, so the short form outranks its American peak market in a country that never recorded more than fifteen in a year.
11,767 in the 1940s
#361
Wallace Wallace means foreigner, and the irony is complete — it is the Anglo-Saxon word for the Britons who were there first, so Scotland's national hero carries a name meaning outsider in his own country.
11,532 in the 1940s
#364
Kevin Kevin is a boy's name of Irish origin meaning "gentle birth," and its saint founded Glendalough and by tradition lived to 120.
11,388 in the 1940s
#369
Elmer Elmer means noble and famous, and its American popularity is traceable to two brothers — the Ebenezer and Jonathan Elmer who signed early revolutionary documents, after whom patriotic families went on to name sons.
11,034 in the 1940s
#370
Hugh Hugh is a boy's name from a Germanic word for mind or spirit, brought to Britain by the Normans.
11,019 in the 1940s
#373
Juan Juan is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "God is gracious."
10,746 in the 1940s
#374
Maurice Maurice is a boy's name from a Latin word meaning a Moor, originally describing someone from Roman North Africa. It is reviving, and it peaked in 1920 — a century-long gap of the same kind we see in Walter and Frances.
10,729 in the 1940s
#375
Micheal Micheal is a boy's name of Hebrew origin whose full form is a rhetorical question — who is like God?
10,716 in the 1940s
#378
Willard Willard means bold desire, and both halves are Germanic words about force of will — it is a surname from a personal name, and its American use is almost entirely nineteenth-century onward.
10,669 in the 1940s
#383
Marshall Marshall began as a stable hand — the word meant a horse servant, and it climbed to become the highest rank in several armies.
10,368 in the 1940s
#385
Garry Garry means spear, and it reached English through a steel town — Gary, Indiana was named for a US Steel chairman, and the place name did more for the given name than any of its Germanic ancestors.
10,363 in the 1940s
#388
Oscar Oscar is a boy's name with two competing origins: the Irish os, deer, plus cara, friend, giving "deer lover," or the Old Norse Ásgeirr, meaning "god's spear."
10,263 in the 1940s
#397
Edgar Edgar is a boy's name meaning wealthy spear, and it is one of very few Old English names still in wide use.
9,810 in the 1940s
#399
Karl Karl means free man, and it is the original German spelling behind Charles — the word named a free peasant, so it began at the bottom of the free classes and rose to name emperors.
9,740 in the 1940s
#404
Stuart Stuart means steward, and the office was literally the sty warden — keeper of the pigs — which rose to run the royal household and then supplied the name of a dynasty.
9,562 in the 1940s
#405
Nathaniel Nathaniel is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "gift of God."
9,560 in the 1940s
#410
Alexander Alexander is a boy's name of Greek origin meaning "defender of men," from alexein, to defend, and aner, man.
9,495 in the 1940s
#412
Benny Benny means son of the right hand, and Jacob overruled the name at the deathbed — Rachel called the child son of my sorrow as she died, and his father renamed him on the spot.
9,401 in the 1940s
#413
Everett Everett is a boy's name of Germanic origin meaning "brave as a wild boar," from eber, boar, and hard, brave or hardy.
9,326 in the 1940s
#417
Virgil Virgil is misspelled and always has been — the poet's name was Vergilius, and medieval scribes changed the e to an i by association with virgo, which is how a Roman family name acquired a meaning it never had.
9,104 in the 1940s
#421
Guy Guy is a boy's name from a Germanic word probably meaning wood or wide, and one of very few names to have become an ordinary English noun — through Guy Fawkes, whose effigies gave the word its modern sense.
9,015 in the 1940s
#425
Morris Morris means dark-skinned, from the Latin for a Moor — and the morris dance carries the same word, having been thought to imitate Moorish dancing when it reached England.
8,884 in the 1940s
#426
Earnest Earnest respells Ernest, and the Germanic behind it is not mild — eornost meant vigor in battle, seriousness of the deadly kind, long before it settled into the sense of being sincere.
8,846 in the 1940s
#430
Matthew Matthew is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "gift of Yahweh," from Mattityahu.
8,775 in the 1940s
#431
Chris Chris shortens two unrelated Greek names — Christopher, which means bearing Christ, and Christine, which means belonging to Christ.
8,742 in the 1940s
#432
Lyle Lyle is a boy's name from the Norman French for "the island," and the l at the front is the definite article rather than part of the word.
8,724 in the 1940s
#436
Max Max is a boy's name of Latin origin meaning "greatest."
8,549 in the 1940s
#437
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.
8,498 in the 1940s
#441
Kent Kent is the oldest recorded place name in England — Cantium appears in Greek writing before the Roman invasion, and its meaning was already uncertain to the Romans who wrote it down.
8,351 in the 1940s
#443
Jonathan Jonathan is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "Yahweh has given," from Yehonatan.
8,296 in the 1940s
#445
Fredrick Fredrick is an American respelling that ranks higher in England and Wales than in the United States — 934th against 1,730th, which reverses the usual direction for a respelling.
8,240 in the 1940s
#446
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.
8,202 in the 1940s
#447
Carlos Carlos is a boy's name of Germanic origin meaning "free man."
8,198 in the 1940s
#448
Luther Luther means army of the people, and its weight comes from a surname rather than a saint — Martin Luther's family name became a given name across the Protestant world, and then across Black America.
8,193 in the 1940s

What Made a 1940s Name

Children in the United States were registered with it between 1940 and 1949. 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.