1950s Baby Names

5,155 names were given to children in the United States between 1950 and 1959, 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

#324
Vernon Vernon is a Norman place name meaning a place of alders, from a Gaulish word — so a French town gave England a surname that America turned into a first name, three languages deep.
20,312 in the 1950s
#325
Gene Gene means well-born, shortened from Eugene — and it has nothing at all to do with genes in biology, which is a separate word coined in 1909 from a different Greek root entirely, by a Danish botanist.
20,260 in the 1950s
#331
Reginald Reginald means counsel-power, and England and Wales ranks it 229th on 217 births against 1285th in the United States — one of the sharpest British-versus-American splits in this group.
19,458 in the 1950s
#334
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.
19,213 in the 1950s
#336
Juan Juan is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "God is gracious."
19,012 in the 1950s
#337
Gilbert Gilbert is a boy's name from Germanic elements meaning bright pledge, and it founded the only medieval religious order native to England.
18,931 in the 1950s
#338
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.
18,868 in the 1950s
#340
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.
18,798 in the 1950s
#342
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.
18,730 in the 1950s
#344
Kurt Kurt means bold counsel, shortened from Konrad — and the courteous reading commonly given is a false friend, coming from an unrelated French word that only sounds similar.
18,656 in the 1950s
#345
Todd Todd is a boy's name from a northern English dialect word for a fox, given as a nickname to someone crafty or red-haired.
18,618 in the 1950s
#349
Greg Greg means watchful, and the Greek is a command rather than a description — gregorein means stay awake, which early Christians took as an instruction about the second coming.
18,245 in the 1950s
#350
Lewis Lewis is a boy's name of Germanic origin meaning "famous warrior," the English form of Louis.
18,214 in the 1950s
#351
Wesley Wesley is a boy's name of English origin meaning "western meadow," from the Old English west and leah.
18,207 in the 1950s
#354
Clyde Clyde took nothing from Bonnie and Clyde.
18,045 in the 1950s
#355
Floyd Floyd is the same name as Lloyd, and the F is a mistake that stuck — English had no way to say the Welsh double L, so it substituted the closest sound it had, and the substitution became a separate name.
17,975 in the 1950s
#357
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.
17,773 in the 1950s
#358
Allan Allan has no settled meaning at all — handsome, little rock and a deer are all proposed for the Breton original, and the name reached England through Brittany rather than through Ireland or Scotland at all.
17,734 in the 1950s
#362
Perry Perry means at the pear tree, from an English place name — and our data marks it reviving, at 1373rd in the United States and 1681st in England and Wales.
17,364 in the 1950s
#364
Franklin Franklin means a freeholder — a man who owned his land but held no noble rank, a specific medieval class.
17,091 in the 1950s
#367
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.
16,715 in the 1950s
#372
Manuel Manuel is a boy's name meaning God is with us, the Spanish short form of Emmanuel.
16,474 in the 1950s
#373
Brad Brad means broad clearing, shortened from Bradley — and the broad element is the same word as the modern English broad, one of the few Old English place-name terms still transparent.
16,466 in the 1950s
#376
Kirk Kirk means church, and it is Norse rather than English — the Vikings brought the word to northern England and Scotland, which is why Scots say kirk where English says church.
16,252 in the 1950s
#381
Carlos Carlos is a boy's name of Germanic origin meaning "free man."
15,996 in the 1950s
#383
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.
15,823 in the 1950s
#384
Freddie Freddie is a name of Germanic origin meaning "peaceful ruler."
15,812 in the 1950s
#386
Leo Leo is a boy's name of Latin origin meaning "lion."
15,618 in the 1950s
#388
Randolph Randolph means shield-wolf, and the shield in it is specifically the rim — the Germanic rand names the edge of the shield rather than the whole thing, which is the part that met an enemy's blade.
15,540 in the 1950s
#392
Darryl Darryl does not mean darling.
15,315 in the 1950s
#397
Dave Dave ranks 2217th in England and Wales and 2469th 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.
14,851 in the 1950s
#399
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."
14,739 in the 1950s
#401
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.
14,677 in the 1950s
#407
Brent Brent means burned land, from ground cleared by fire — a place name recording a specific agricultural practice rather than a hill or a holy site, which are the two readings usually offered for it.
14,375 in the 1950s
#409
Harvey Harvey is a boy's name of Breton origin meaning "battle worthy."
14,322 in the 1950s
#412
Gerard Gerard is a boy's name from Germanic elements meaning brave with the spear.
14,235 in the 1950s
#413
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.
14,113 in the 1950s
#415
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.
13,919 in the 1950s
#419
Rex Rex means king, and it is the plain Latin nominative — which makes it the pair to Regis, the genitive meaning of the king.
13,543 in the 1950s
#421
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.
13,253 in the 1950s
#423
Bob Bob comes from Robert, and the B is not a corruption but a system — medieval English made pet names by rhyming, which is why Rob gave Bob, Will gave Bill and Rick gave Dick.
12,932 in the 1950s
#424
Terrence Terrence descends from a Roman playwright who was born enslaved in North Africa — Terence was freed by his owner, wrote six comedies that survive complete, and shaped Latin prose style for centuries.
12,917 in the 1950s
#425
Chester Chester is a boy's name of Latin origin meaning "fortress" or "walled camp."
12,858 in the 1950s
#427
Maurice Maurice is a boy's name from a Latin word meaning a Moor, originally describing someone from Roman North Africa. Our data marks it reviving, and it peaked in 1920 — a century-long gap of the same kind we see in Walter and Frances.
12,814 in the 1950s
#430
Tyrone Tyrone means Eoghan's land, an Irish county, and it reached American use almost entirely through one actor — Tyrone Power, whose grandfather took the name from the county his family came from.
12,560 in the 1950s
#431
Nathaniel Nathaniel is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "gift of God."
12,517 in the 1950s
#432
Ruben Ruben is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "behold, a son."
12,495 in the 1950s
#433
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.
12,354 in the 1950s

What made a 1950s name

Nothing about the sound of it. A name is on this page because children in the United States were registered with it between 1950 and 1959, and its position is simply how many. Every list of "1950s 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.