1940s Baby Names

13,557 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

#529
Neal Neal has no agreed meaning — champion, cloud and passionate are all proposed for the Irish Niall and none is established.
6,175 in the 1940s
#530
Antonio Antonio is a boy's name of Etruscan origin whose meaning is unknown.
6,171 in the 1940s
#531
Ross Ross means a headland or a promontory, from Gaelic, and Scotland ranks it 328th — its strongest market, ahead of Ireland at 347th and far ahead of the United States at 1465th.
6,170 in the 1940s
#532
Mitchell Mitchell is a boy's name from a medieval English form of Michael, meaning who is like God — though a second and quite separate source exists from an old word simply meaning big.
6,163 in the 1940s
#533
Pete Pete means rock, and it began as a joke about a man's character — Jesus renames Simon as Cephas, the Aramaic for a stone, and the pun works in Greek but not in English.
6,149 in the 1940s
#534
Oliver Oliver is a boy's name that entered England with the Normans and has a genuinely disputed origin.
6,124 in the 1940s
#535
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.
6,095 in the 1940s
#536
Wilbur Wilbur ranks 579th in England and Wales against 3956th in the United States, so a name most people think of as thoroughly American is now used more than six times more readily in England.
5,985 in the 1940s
#537
Aaron Aaron is a boy's name of Hebrew origin whose meaning is not established.
5,984 in the 1940s
#538
Rick Rick means brave ruler, shortened from Richard — and the medieval habit of rhyming pet names is why Rick also produced Dick, which is the same name with a different first letter.
5,977 in the 1940s
#539
Roosevelt
5,922 in the 1940s
#540
Jeff Jeff means peace, shortened from Geoffrey — but the first element of that compound is disputed between three different Germanic words, so only the peace half of the name is actually agreed on by the sources.
5,909 in the 1940s
#541
Darryl Darryl does not mean darling.
5,901 in the 1940s
#542
Ada Ada is a girl's name with two origins. In Germanic it is a short form of names beginning with adal, noble; in Hebrew, Adah means "adornment" and belongs to two women in Genesis.
5,890 in the 1940s
#543
Eloise Eloise is a girl's name of French origin, from the medieval Héloïse.
5,883 in the 1940s
#544
Mickey
5,869 in the 1940s
#545
Rudy Rudy is a boy's name of Germanic origin meaning "famous wolf."
5,858 in the 1940s
#546
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.
5,823 in the 1940s
#547
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.
5,807 in the 1940s
#548
Mamie Mamie has no single parent — it shortens Mary, Margaret and Miriam alike, and Mary's own meaning has never been established, so the name inherits an unresolved question three ways.
5,782 in the 1940s
#549
Jerald
5,735 in the 1940s
#550
Michelle Michelle is a girl's name, the French feminine of Michel, from a Hebrew question meaning who is like God.
5,714 in the 1940s
#551
Melba
5,698 in the 1940s
#552
Malcolm Malcolm means devotee of Columba, and it is one of only two rising names in this group — 168th in Canada, 272nd in the United States, 362nd in Scotland, 539th in Ireland, 1333rd in England and Wales and 1629th in France, and climbing in our data rather than falling.
5,686 in the 1940s
#553
Mack Mack means son of, and on its own it is only half a name — the Gaelic mac is a prefix, so using it alone is like naming a child Junior with nothing in front of it.
5,686 in the 1940s
#554
Ollie Ollie is a name of Norse origin meaning "ancestor's descendant."
5,675 in the 1940s
#555
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.
5,655 in the 1940s
#556
Sammie
5,637 in the 1940s
#557
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.
5,602 in the 1940s
#558
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.
5,600 in the 1940s
#559
Nathan Nathan is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "he gave," from Natan.
5,582 in the 1940s
#560
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.
5,576 in the 1940s
#561
Ron
5,568 in the 1940s
#562
Doyle
5,559 in the 1940s
#563
Bradley Bradley is a boy's name from an English place name meaning broad meadow.
5,543 in the 1940s
#564
Laurie Laurie is a name meaning laurel, and it is genuinely mixed by country — masculine in Britain as a short form of Laurence, feminine in America as a short form of Laura.
5,541 in the 1940s
#565
Kerry Kerry is 53 percent female in our records — the fourth-closest to an even split on this site, behind only Emerson, Riley and Jackie.
5,517 in the 1940s
#566
Terrance Terrance respells Terrence, and the name descends from a Roman playwright born enslaved in North Africa — Terence was freed by his owner and his Latin became a school text for centuries.
5,512 in the 1940s
#567
Cindy Cindy is a girl's name, a pet form of Cynthia, which was a title of the moon goddess Artemis.
5,486 in the 1940s
#568
Teddy Teddy is a boy's name that shortens either Edward, meaning "wealthy guardian," or Theodore, meaning "gift of God."
5,485 in the 1940s
#569
Sherman
5,471 in the 1940s
#570
Doreen Doreen has two possible parents and neither is settled — an Irish Doireann whose own meaning is disputed, or Dora with an Irish diminutive attached, which would make it a nineteenth-century construction.
5,461 in the 1940s
#571
Debra Debra is a girl's name, the phonetic respelling of Deborah, from the Hebrew for bee.
5,435 in the 1940s
#572
Melinda Melinda is an invented name rather than an inherited one — an eighteenth-century literary coinage joining the Greek word for honey to the ending of Belinda and Lucinda.
5,423 in the 1940s
#573
Dewey
5,410 in the 1940s
#574
Sylvester Sylvester means of the woods, and a pope carried it into the calendar — Sylvester I died on 31 December, which is why New Year's Eve is still called Silvester across much of Europe.
5,405 in the 1940s
#575
Carlton Carlton means the settlement of the free peasants, and the word for those peasants became an insult — ceorl gave English churl and churlish, so the name preserves a class that the language later turned against.
5,393 in the 1940s
#576
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.
5,336 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.