1950s Baby Names

9,057 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

#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 2,155th in France and 14,047th 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 on record — 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 on record.
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 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 on record, 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 it is 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
#387
Melody Melody is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "song" or "singing," from melodia.
15,541 in the 1950s
#389
Edith Edith is a girl's name of Old English origin meaning "prosperous in war."
15,518 in the 1950s

What Made a 1950s Name

Children in the United States were registered with it between 1950 and 1959. 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.