1950s Baby Names

15,671 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

#289
Duane Duane means the little dark one, from an Irish surname built on the word for black — and that same root also gives us Dublin, which means the black pool that the city originally grew up around.
24,272 in the 1950s
#290
Jeanette Jeanette means God is gracious, a French double diminutive of Jeanne.
24,031 in the 1950s
#291
Benjamin Benjamin is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "son of the right hand," from Binyamin.
23,928 in the 1950s
#292
Bill Bill comes from William, and the B is the point — medieval English made pet names by rhyming, which is why Will became Bill, Rob became Bob and Rick became Dick.
23,909 in the 1950s
#293
Annie Annie is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "grace" or "favor."
23,822 in the 1950s
#294
Tom Tom is a boy's name of Aramaic origin meaning "twin," a short form of Thomas used as a full name across Europe.
23,808 in the 1950s
#295
Vivian Vivian is a name of Latin origin meaning "alive" or "lively," from vivus.
23,749 in the 1950s
#296
Alvin Alvin means elf-friend, from an Old English name that treats elves as beings whose favor was worth having.
23,250 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
#299
Nicholas Nicholas is a boy's name of Greek origin meaning "victory of the people," from nike, victory, and laos, the people.
22,666 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
#303
Tim Tim means honoring God, and France ranks it 277th — far above the United States at 3,221st, which is the reverse of what an English short form would normally do.
22,245 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
#305
Mitchell Mitchell is a boy's name from a medieval English form of Michael, meaning who is like God — though a second and quite separate source exists from an old word simply meaning big.
22,040 in the 1950s
#306
Marc Marc is a boy's name from a Roman name probably meaning dedicated to Mars, the god of war, and it is the source of the month of March.
22,000 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
#309
Leon Leon is a boy's name of Greek origin meaning "lion."
21,468 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
#315
Dwight Dwight descends from Dionysus, the Greek god of wine — through the medieval woman's name Diot, a pet form of Dionysia, which is an unusually indirect route for a masculine surname.
20,938 in the 1950s
#316
Kerry Kerry is 53 percent female on record — the fourth-closest to an even split on this site, behind only Emerson, Riley and Jackie.
20,858 in the 1950s
#317
Lloyd Lloyd is a boy's name from the Welsh word for gray, and the double L is a genuine Welsh consonant that English has no letter for.
20,711 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
#320
Bryan Bryan is a boy's name of Irish origin whose meaning is unsettled — noble and high are both proposed.
20,670 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
#323
Lonnie Lonnie shortens Alonzo and Alphonso, meaning noble and ready — and the Germanic original reached Spain with the Visigoths, so a name that reads as American South is Gothic by descent.
20,347 in the 1950s
#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
#326
Johnnie Johnnie means God is gracious, a pet form of John.
20,231 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
#331
Reginald Reginald means counsel-power, and England and Wales ranks it 229th on 217 births against 1,285th in the United States — one of the sharpest British-versus-American splits in this group.
19,458 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
#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
#335
Marion Marion is a French diminutive of Mary that has crossed sexes twice over — it is 81 percent female on record, yet its most famous bearer was John Wayne, born Marion Robert Morrison.
19,144 in the 1950s
#336
Juan Juan is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "God is gracious."
19,012 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.