1950s Baby Names

8,957 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

#288
Geraldine Geraldine was invented in a 1537 love poem — the Earl of Surrey coined it for Lady Elizabeth FitzGerald, calling her the Fair Geraldine.
24,294 in the 1950s
#290
Jeanette Jeanette means God is gracious, a French double diminutive of Jeanne.
24,031 in the 1950s
#293
Annie Annie is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "grace" or "favor."
23,822 in the 1950s
#295
Vivian Vivian is a name of Latin origin meaning "alive" or "lively," from vivus.
23,749 in the 1950s
#297
Claudia Claudia means lame, and it comes from one of Rome's most powerful families.
23,200 in the 1950s
#298
Lynda Lynda means lime tree, from Spanish and Germanic roots that disagree — the pretty reading comes from the Spanish linda, and the tree from a Germanic element, and neither is settled.
22,731 in the 1950s
#300
Audrey Audrey is a girl's name of Old English origin meaning "noble strength," from Æthelthryth.
22,498 in the 1950s
#301
Melissa Melissa is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "bee," and it was the title of the priestesses who served Demeter.
22,324 in the 1950s
#302
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.
22,291 in the 1950s
#304
Patsy Patsy serves both Patricia and Patrick, and it is 94 percent female in our records — the male use survives mainly in Ireland, where Patsy is still an ordinary man's name rather than a woman's name at all.
22,091 in the 1950s
#307
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.
21,531 in the 1950s
#308
Vicky Vicky means victory, and it is one of the clearest cases on this site of a monarch making a name — Victoria was rare in English before the queen and ordinary for a century afterward.
21,519 in the 1950s
#310
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.
21,436 in the 1950s
#311
June June is a girl's name of Latin origin taken from the month, which is named for the goddess Juno — the queen of the Roman gods and the protector of marriage and childbirth.
21,312 in the 1950s
#312
Carmen Carmen has two unrelated sources — the Latin word for a song, and a Spanish Marian title from Mount Carmel in Israel.
21,086 in the 1950s
#313
Marjorie Marjorie is a girl's name meaning pearl, an English form of Margaret whose modern spelling was pulled toward the herb marjoram by nothing more than a coincidence of sound.
20,974 in the 1950s
#314
Belinda Belinda is a literary invention with a snake in it — the Germanic element behind it is usually read as a serpent, and Pope's Rape of the Lock made the name fashionable in 1712.
20,970 in the 1950s
#318
Ruby Ruby is a girl's name of Latin origin naming the red gemstone, from ruber, meaning red.
20,703 in the 1950s
#319
Arlene Arlene has no established origin at all — it appears in the nineteenth century with no traceable parent name, and the Irish pledge reading usually given for it belongs to a different name entirely.
20,684 in the 1950s
#321
Patti Patti and Patty peaked one year apart at almost exactly the same size — 3,121 births in 1958 and 3,123 in 1959 — which is about as close as two spellings of one name get in our records.
20,627 in the 1950s
#322
Sara Sara is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "princess" or "noblewoman."
20,526 in the 1950s
#327
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.
20,041 in the 1950s
#328
Rosa Rosa is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "rose."
19,994 in the 1950s
#329
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.
19,868 in the 1950s
#330
Melanie Melanie is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "black" or "dark."
19,862 in the 1950s
#332
Delores Delores means sorrows, and it is a Marian title rather than a wish — Our Lady of Sorrows, named for the seven griefs of the Virgin, which is why a name meaning pain was ever given.
19,419 in the 1950s
#333
Vanessa Vanessa was invented by Jonathan Swift around 1713, built from the name of a woman he was writing to — and it later became the name of a genus of butterflies.
19,218 in the 1950s
#339
Holly Holly is a girl's name of Old English origin taken from the tree, from holegn.
18,811 in the 1950s
#341
Monica Monica is a girl's name whose meaning is genuinely unknown, and whose saint — the mother of Augustine — came from Roman North Africa, so the name may be Berber rather than Latin or Greek at all.
18,736 in the 1950s
#343
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.
18,720 in the 1950s
#346
Shelley Shelley means a clearing on a ledge, and it has nothing to do with shells — the poet's surname records a patch of high ground in Suffolk or Sussex, not anything from a beach.
18,534 in the 1950s
#347
Marianne Marianne is the personification of the French Republic, and her bust stands in every town hall in France — so the name carries a civic weight in one market that it has nowhere else.
18,498 in the 1950s
#348
Dolores Dolores is a girl's name meaning sorrows — taken from a title of the Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows, which counts seven specific griefs.
18,431 in the 1950s
#359
Veronica Veronica is a girl's name from a Latin phrase meaning true image, and the saint behind it was invented to explain a relic — the cloth came first, and the woman was named after it.
17,649 in the 1950s
#361
Mildred Mildred is a girl's name from Old English elements meaning gentle strength, and it is among the least fashionable names of the twentieth century — yet our data marks it reviving, ninety years after its 1920 peak.
17,623 in the 1950s
#363
Eva Eva is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "life" or "living."
17,166 in the 1950s
#365
Rachel Rachel is a girl's name from Hebrew meaning ewe, borne by Jacob's wife in Genesis.
16,849 in the 1950s
#366
Shelia Shelia is Cecilia with two letters swapped and four languages in between — Cecilia became the Irish Síle, Síle was written Sheila in English, and Sheila was misspelled into Shelia often enough to become its own name.
16,791 in the 1950s
#369
Roxanne Roxanne means dawn or bright, and it is Persian rather than Greek — Alexander married Roxana in Bactria, and she and their son were murdered after his death.
16,618 in the 1950s
#370
Lillian Lillian is a girl's name usually explained as an elaboration of Lily, from the Latin lilium, and sometimes as a variant of Elizabeth by way of the medieval pet form Lilian.
16,560 in the 1950s
#371
Carole Carole is a girl's name meaning free man, the French spelling of Carol.
16,535 in the 1950s
#374
Josephine Josephine is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "he will add," the French feminine form of Joseph.
16,462 in the 1950s
#375
Carrie Carrie is a girl's name, a pet form of Caroline meaning free man through Charles.
16,254 in the 1950s
#377
Patty Patty belonged to Martha before it belonged to Patricia — the pet form was reassigned in the twentieth century, one of several nicknames in English that quietly changed parents.
16,133 in the 1950s
#378
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.
16,105 in the 1950s
#379
Sherri Sherri looks French and is not — it respells Cherie, meaning darling, but Cherie is not a traditional French given name at all, so the name is an English invention wearing French clothes.
16,104 in the 1950s
#382
Grace Grace is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "favor" or "blessing," from gratia.
15,982 in the 1950s
#385
Esther Esther is a girl's name usually connected to the Persian word for star, and possibly to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar.
15,808 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.