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

#289
Gayle Gayle carries 67,694 lifetime births and now charts in none of our six markets — one of the largest names on this site to have fallen entirely out of current use.
17,483 in the 1940s
#290
Gilbert Gilbert is a boy's name from Germanic elements meaning bright pledge, and it founded the only medieval religious order native to England.
17,427 in the 1940s
#291
Bernice Bernice is a girl's name meaning bringer of victory, and it is the same name as Veronica — both descend from the Greek Berenike by different routes.
17,388 in the 1940s
#292
Duane Duane means the little dark one, from an Irish surname built on the word for black — and that same root also gives us Dublin, which means the black pool that the city originally grew up around.
17,275 in the 1940s
#293
Benjamin Benjamin is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "son of the right hand," from Binyamin.
17,252 in the 1940s
#294
Lester Lester means from Leicester, and the spelling is the honest one — Leicester has been pronounced LES-ter for centuries, so the surname simply wrote down what people had actually been saying to each other all along.
17,230 in the 1940s
#295
Andrea Andrea is a name meaning "manly" or "brave," from the Greek aner.
17,187 in the 1940s
#296
Tony Tony is a boy's name from the Roman family name Antonius, whose meaning has never been established.
17,177 in the 1940s
#297
Lonnie Lonnie shortens Alonzo and Alphonso, meaning noble and ready — and the Germanic original reached Spain with the Visigoths, so a name that reads as American South is Gothic by descent.
17,099 in the 1940s
#298
Maryann Maryann joins two names whose own meanings are unsettled — Mary has never been securely derived from the Hebrew, and Ann means grace, so only half of the compound has a firm reading.
17,084 in the 1940s
#299
Leo Leo is a boy's name of Latin origin meaning "lion."
17,075 in the 1940s
#300
Jose Jose is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "he will add," the Spanish and Portuguese form of Joseph.
17,011 in the 1940s
#301
Hazel Hazel is a girl's name of English origin naming the hazel tree, from the Old English hæsel.
16,958 in the 1940s
#302
Herman Herman means army man, and the German national hero Hermann is a Latin scribe's version of a Cheruscan name we cannot now recover — Arminius, the chief who destroyed three Roman legions in AD 9.
16,957 in the 1940s
#303
Rosa Rosa is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "rose."
16,920 in the 1940s
#304
Dean Dean is a boy's name with two English origins.
16,802 in the 1940s
#305
Glen Glen means a narrow valley, and it is one of very few Gaelic words that English borrowed wholesale rather than adapting to its own sounds.
16,723 in the 1940s
#306
Bertha Bertha is a girl's name from a Germanic word meaning bright, and it was Charlemagne's mother's name.
16,309 in the 1940s
#307
Maxine Maxine is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "greatest," a feminine form of Maximus.
16,131 in the 1940s
#308
Marian Marian is a girl's name that either joins Mary and Ann or diminutives Mary alone — the sources disagree.
16,121 in the 1940s
#309
Arnold Arnold means eagle power, and England and Wales ranks it 631st on 59 births — well above the United States at 1478th, which is not what the name's twentieth-century American associations would predict.
16,104 in the 1940s
#310
Ella Ella is a girl's name with two distinct origins. The Norman French line derives from the Germanic element ali, meaning other or foreign, while a Hebrew line gives Ella as a word for a terebinth tree.
16,080 in the 1940s
#311
Christopher Christopher is a boy's name of Greek origin meaning "bearer of Christ," from Christos and pherein, to carry.
16,064 in the 1940s
#312
Paulette Paulette is a girl's name meaning small or humble, a French diminutive of Paul — so it is a diminutive of a name that already means little.
15,942 in the 1940s
#313
Joy Joy is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning exactly what it says, taken from the English word.
15,797 in the 1940s
#314
Beatrice Beatrice is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "she who brings happiness."
15,625 in the 1940s
#315
Cathy Cathy is a girl's name, a pet form of Catherine whose meaning has never been established.
15,594 in the 1940s
#316
Nicholas Nicholas is a boy's name of Greek origin meaning "victory of the people," from nike, victory, and laos, the people.
15,531 in the 1940s
#317
Lillie Lillie is a girl's name from the flower, which has stood for purity in Christian art for so long that the association predates the name.
15,458 in the 1940s
#318
Chester Chester is a boy's name of Latin origin meaning "fortress" or "walled camp."
15,404 in the 1940s
#319
Cecil Cecil means blind, from a Roman family name, and the saint who made it famous is patron of music on the strength of one ambiguous line in her own account of her wedding day.
15,392 in the 1940s
#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
#322
Janis Janis fell further than any name in this sweep — 3,217 American births in 1947 down to 10 in the most recent year we hold, which is a fall of more than 99 percent.
14,908 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
#324
Lynne Lynne now ranks 2155th in France and 14047th in the United States, so a name that peaked in America at 2,471 births ranks far higher in a country that barely used it.
14,397 in the 1940s
#325
Ida Ida is a girl's name from a Germanic word for work or labor, and it charts in all seven markets we track.
14,350 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 in our records 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
#328
Faye Faye is a girl's name of Old French origin meaning "fairy," from a word that traces back to the Fates of Roman religion.
13,785 in the 1940s
#329
Deanna Deanna was popularized by a stage name — the actress born Edna Mae Durbin was renamed Deanna Durbin in 1936, and American births rose from almost nothing to a peak of 4,331 in 1970.
13,759 in the 1940s
#330
Valerie Valerie is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "strong" or "healthy," from the verb valere, meaning to be strong or to be well.
13,723 in the 1940s
#331
Rachel Rachel is a girl's name from Hebrew meaning ewe, borne by Jacob's wife in Genesis.
13,464 in the 1940s
#332
Emily Emily is a girl's name of Latin origin, from the Roman family name Aemilius.
13,442 in the 1940s
#333
Lucy Lucy is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "light," from lux.
13,178 in the 1940s
#334
Penny Penny is a girl's name of Greek origin, a diminutive of Penelope, whose own name is bound up with a duck.
13,177 in the 1940s
#335
Janie Janie means God is gracious, shortened from Jane — and Jane is the English feminine of John, which makes it part of the largest name family in Europe by a considerable margin.
13,170 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

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.