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

#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
#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
#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
#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 our gap band — 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 actually 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

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.