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

#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
#386
Bennie Bennie means son of the right hand, and Jacob renamed the child to get there — his dying mother called him son of my sorrow, and his father would not let the name stand.
10,353 in the 1940s
#387
Dana Dana is a name with several unrelated sources — a Danish origin, a Hebrew feminine of Daniel, and an Irish mother goddess.
10,288 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
#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 6,405th 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
#396
Robin Robin is a name of Germanic origin meaning "bright fame."
9,854 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
#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
#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
#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
#402
Sandy Sandy shortens Alexander and Alexandra, meaning defender of the people — and in Scotland it is the standard familiar form of Alexander, which is why it reads as Scottish rather than merely short.
9,617 in the 1940s
#403
Sammy Sammy means God has heard, or possibly name of God — the Hebrew admits both readings, and the Bible's own explanation of Samuel uses a pun on asking that fits neither.
9,606 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
#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
#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
#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
#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
#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
#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
#418
Tommie Tommie means twin, and it is one of the most evenly split names on this site — 33 percent of recorded births are female, because it serves as a short form of both Thomas and Thomasina.
9,064 in the 1940s
#419
Leona Leona means lioness, and it is 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
#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
#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
#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
#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
#428
Carroll Carroll is one of the more evenly divided names on this site — 14 percent of recorded births are female, and it belonged to the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence.
8,800 in the 1940s
#429
Cora Cora is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "maiden," from kore.
8,783 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

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.