1940s Baby Names

7,547 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

#368
Carrie Carrie is a girl's name, a pet form of Caroline meaning free man through Charles.
11,049 in the 1940s
#371
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.
10,843 in the 1940s
#372
Sheryl Sheryl respells Cheryl, which is itself a twentieth-century invention — it appears in American records around 1920 with no traceable parent, and the meanings offered for it were supplied afterwards.
10,775 in the 1940s
#376
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.
10,696 in the 1940s
#377
Jennifer Jennifer is a girl's name, the Cornish form of the Welsh Gwenhwyfar, the name of King Arthur's queen.
10,691 in the 1940s
#380
Claire Claire is a girl's name of French origin meaning "clear" or "bright," from the Latin clarus.
10,497 in the 1940s
#381
Colleen Colleen means girl in Irish, and it is barely used in Ireland — it is an Irish-American name rather than an Irish one.
10,478 in the 1940s
#382
Bonita
10,405 in the 1940s
#389
Nellie Nellie is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "shining light."
10,244 in the 1940s
#390
Lana Lana is a girl's name with several competing origins — a Hawaiian word for calm, a Slavic short form of Svetlana, and a Hollywood invention of the 1930s.
10,209 in the 1940s
#391
Denise Denise is a girl's name, the French feminine of Denis, and like it traces to Dionysus, the Greek god of wine.
10,122 in the 1940s
#392
Vickie Vickie is an American name that now charts only in France — it peaked at 6,957 US births in 1956 and has left the American rankings entirely, surviving at 6405th in a market it was never native to.
10,104 in the 1940s
#393
Dianna Dianna means the shining one, and the root is the same one behind Zeus and Jupiter — an Indo-European word for the bright daytime sky that also gives us the ordinary word day.
10,076 in the 1940s
#394
Dixie Dixie names the American South and nobody knows why — the leading account is a French ten-dollar note printed dix in Louisiana, and the rival is the Mason-Dixon line.
10,062 in the 1940s
#395
Toni Toni has no established meaning, because Antonia does not — the Roman family name Antonius is probably Etruscan, and the flower reading attached to Anthony is a Renaissance invention.
9,984 in the 1940s
#398
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.
9,766 in the 1940s
#400
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.
9,646 in the 1940s
#401
Madeline Madeline is a girl's name meaning "of Magdala," a fishing town on the Sea of Galilee whose name comes from the Hebrew migdal, a tower.
9,626 in the 1940s
#406
Agnes Agnes is a girl's name from the Greek for pure, and the reason its saint is shown with a lamb is a Latin pun — agnus, lamb, sounds like the Greek hagnos but is a completely different word.
9,543 in the 1940s
#407
Geneva Geneva is not named after the Swiss city — it is a form of Genevieve, whose own meaning is unsettled, and the city's name comes from a Celtic word for a bend or estuary entirely separately.
9,532 in the 1940s
#408
Nina Nina is a girl's name with several unrelated origins.
9,520 in the 1940s
#409
Carla Carla is a girl's name meaning free man, the Italian and Spanish feminine of Carlo.
9,497 in the 1940s
#411
Nora Nora is a girl's name that developed as a short form of longer names, chiefly Honora and Eleanor, and is now used independently.
9,480 in the 1940s
#414
Velma Velma is an invented name with no root at all — it appears in nineteenth-century America built on the pattern of Selma and Thelma, and the Germanic derivations offered for it were attached afterwards.
9,310 in the 1940s
#415
Susie Susie means lily, shortened from Susan, and the Hebrew word was borrowed from Egyptian — where it may have named a lotus rather than a lily, which changes the flower entirely.
9,236 in the 1940s
#416
Lydia Lydia is a girl's name meaning "woman from Lydia," an ancient kingdom in what is now western Turkey.
9,215 in the 1940s
#419
Leona Leona means lioness, and our data marks it reviving across six markets — the United States 429th, France 556th, Scotland 631st, Ireland 705th and England and Wales 716th, all within 290 places.
9,047 in the 1940s
#420
Mae Mae is a girl's name in France, generally read as a form of Mae or as a feminine of the Breton Mahé.
9,032 in the 1940s
#422
Deloris
8,984 in the 1940s
#423
Naomi Naomi is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "pleasantness," from No'omi.
8,956 in the 1940s
#424
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.
8,884 in the 1940s
#427
Christina Christina is a girl's name from the Latin for a follower of Christ, and the fullest of the family that includes Christine and Kristina.
8,844 in the 1940s
#429
Cora Cora is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "maiden," from kore.
8,783 in the 1940s
#433
Dawn Dawn is a girl's name taken directly from the English word for daybreak, and it is the English counterpart of Aurora rather than a translation of it.
8,669 in the 1940s
#434
Beth Beth is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "God is my oath," a short form of Elizabeth, and the seven in the Hebrew is the same idea as the oath.
8,661 in the 1940s
#435
Bernadette Bernadette is a girl's name meaning brave as a bear, and its bearer was a fourteen-year-old miller's daughter whose visions at Lourdes in 1858 turned a Pyrenean grotto into one of the most visited places on earth.
8,631 in the 1940s
#438
Wendy Wendy is usually credited to J.
8,428 in the 1940s
#439
Yolanda Yolanda means violet, and the flower reaches it through a chain of respellings — the Greek Iolanthe became Violante in Italian by association with viola, and Spanish then rendered that form as the Yolanda we know.
8,366 in the 1940s
#440
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.
8,357 in the 1940s
#442
Viola Viola means violet, and it names the flower, the instrument and a Shakespeare heroine from the same Latin root.
8,307 in the 1940s
#444
Antoinette Antoinette means little Antoine, and the meaning usually given for the parent name — flower — is a false etymology.
8,244 in the 1940s
#449
Myrna
8,186 in the 1940s
#451
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.
8,121 in the 1940s
#453
Pearl Pearl is a girl's name taken from the gem, and it charts in all seven markets we track.
8,060 in the 1940s
#455
Cecilia Cecilia is a girl's name of Latin origin from the Roman family name Caecilius, which derives from caecus, meaning blind.
8,021 in the 1940s
#458
Ernestine Ernestine is the feminine of the same Germanic word as Earnest in this group — eornost, the vigor of a fight.
7,982 in the 1940s
#459
Gertrude Gertrude is a girl's name from Germanic elements meaning spear-strength, and its saint is patron of cats — a modern attribution that no medieval source supports.
7,948 in the 1940s
#460
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.
7,922 in the 1940s

What made a 1940s name

Nothing about the sound of it. A name is on this page because children in the United States were registered with it between 1940 and 1949, and its position is simply how many. Every list of "1940s 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.