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

#390
Edna Edna is a girl's name from a Hebrew word meaning delight, and it shares its root with Eden.
15,442 in the 1950s
#391
Marian Marian is a girl's name that either joins Mary and Ann or diminutives Mary alone — the sources disagree.
15,434 in the 1950s
#393
Georgia Georgia is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "farmer" or "worker of the earth," the feminine of George, from ge, earth, and ergon, work.
15,119 in the 1950s
#394
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.
14,986 in the 1950s
#395
Debora
14,930 in the 1950s
#396
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.
14,903 in the 1950s
#398
Jacquelyn Jacquelyn means supplanter, and the chain is long — it is an American respelling of Jacqueline, the French feminine of Jacques, which is James, which is Jacob.
14,832 in the 1950s
#400
Ramona Ramona means protecting counsel, and a novel made it — Helen Hunt Jackson wrote Ramona in 1884 to expose the treatment of Native Californians, and readers took the romance and ignored the argument.
14,687 in the 1950s
#402
Emma Emma is a girl's name of Germanic origin meaning "whole" or "universal," from the element ermen, found in older names such as Ermintrude.
14,657 in the 1950s
#403
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.
14,638 in the 1950s
#404
Lydia Lydia is a girl's name meaning "woman from Lydia," an ancient kingdom in what is now western Turkey.
14,635 in the 1950s
#405
Pauline Pauline is a girl's name from the Latin for small or humble, the feminine of Paul.
14,485 in the 1950s
#406
Bobbie Bobbie is 83 percent female on record and England and Wales ranks it 523rd on 110 births — far above the United States at 2,072nd, reversing what an American nickname-name would usually do.
14,403 in the 1950s
#410
Candace Candace is a job title mistaken for a name — Kandake was the word for the queen mother of Kush, and Acts uses it as though it were personal, so a Sudanese royal office became an American given name.
14,262 in the 1950s
#411
Priscilla Priscilla means ancient or venerable, and it is a diminutive — so the name literally reads as little old one, which was a mark of respect rather than an insult.
14,257 in the 1950s
#414
Gina Gina is not one name — it is the ending of several different ones, and which name it shortens changes the meaning entirely.
13,989 in the 1950s
#416
Billie Billie is a name of Germanic origin meaning "resolute protector."
13,821 in the 1950s
#417
Margie Margie means pearl, carried from Margaret — and the Greek behind it may be a loan from an Indo-Iranian source, so the word for the gem traveled a long way before it became a name.
13,693 in the 1950s
#418
Lucy Lucy is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "light," from lux.
13,687 in the 1950s
#422
Tamara Tamara means date palm, and the tree mattered more than the fruit — in the ancient Near East a date palm was a standing symbol of uprightness and fertility.
13,105 in the 1950s
#426
Emily Emily is a girl's name of Latin origin, from the Roman family name Aemilius.
12,853 in the 1950s
#428
Nina Nina is a girl's name with several unrelated origins.
12,813 in the 1950s
#429
Clara Clara is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "bright" or "clear," from clarus.
12,800 in the 1950s
#434
Wilma Wilma means resolute protection, and The Flintstones did nothing for it.
12,321 in the 1950s
#436
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.
12,236 in the 1950s
#438
Gladys Gladys is a girl's name from Welsh, usually taken as a form of Claudia — which would give it the meaning lame.
12,222 in the 1950s
#439
Kristine Kristine means a follower of Christ, and it is the fourth spelling of this name to appear in this group — after Kristin, Kristen and Kristina, all four of them American-led rather than Scandinavian.
12,085 in the 1950s
#440
Bonita
12,082 in the 1950s
#441
Lucille Lucille is a girl's name from the Latin for light, given to children born at daybreak.
12,068 in the 1950s
#442
Teri Teri descends from a name with no agreed meaning — Theresa has been traced to a Greek island, to a word for summer and to one for hunting, and none of the three has carried the field.
11,899 in the 1950s
#443
Thelma Thelma is a girl's name invented for a novel in 1887, and the Greek word it was probably built from means "will" or "volition."
11,812 in the 1950s
#446
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.
11,603 in the 1950s
#447
Ethel Ethel is a girl's name from an Old English word meaning noble, and it is not a name in its own right in that language — it is the first half of longer names like Ethelred, cut off and used alone.
11,600 in the 1950s
#448
Karla Karla means free man, and the Germanic word named a free peasant — so a name that now reads as aristocratic began at the bottom of the free classes and rose to name emperors.
11,467 in the 1950s
#449
Marla
11,452 in the 1950s
#452
Bertha Bertha is a girl's name from a Germanic word meaning bright, and it was Charlemagne's mother's name.
11,293 in the 1950s
#453
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.
11,260 in the 1950s
#454
Pam
11,241 in the 1950s
#456
Mona Mona in Mona Lisa is not a name — it contracts ma donna, my lady, so the painting's title is closer to Madam Lisa than to anyone called Mona.
11,181 in the 1950s
#459
Eleanor Eleanor is a girl's name that traces back to Eleanor of Aquitaine, the twelfth-century queen of France and later England, whose own name, Aliénor, is widely explained as "the other Aenor," distinguishing her from her mother, also named Aenor.
11,072 in the 1950s
#460
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.
11,066 in the 1950s
#461
Vera Vera is a girl's name with two origins that both work. In Russian it means "faith"; in Latin vera means "true" — and unusually for such a pair, the two senses reinforce rather than contradict each other.
11,061 in the 1950s
#462
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.
11,044 in the 1950s
#463
Sheri Sheri means darling, and it is French by way of a misreading — English took the adjective chérie as though it were a name, which is why it has no history as one in France itself.
10,985 in the 1950s
#466
Beatrice Beatrice is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "she who brings happiness."
10,768 in the 1950s
#468
Bernadette Bernadette is a girl's name meaning brave as a bear, and its bearer was a fourteen-year-old miller's daughter whose visions at Lourdes in 1858 turned a Pyrenean grotto into one of the most visited places on earth.
10,701 in the 1950s
#469
Florence Florence is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "blossoming" or "flourishing."
10,618 in the 1950s
#470
Betsy Betsy is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "God is my oath."
10,561 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.