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

#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
#386
Leo Leo is a boy's name of Latin origin meaning "lion."
15,618 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
#388
Randolph Randolph means shield-wolf, and the shield in it is specifically the rim — the Germanic rand names the edge of the shield rather than the whole thing, which is the part that met an enemy's blade.
15,540 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
#392
Darryl Darryl does not mean darling.
15,315 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
#397
Dave Dave ranks 2,217th in England and Wales and 2,469th in the United States, so the short form outranks its American peak market in a country that never recorded more than fifteen in a year.
14,851 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
#399
Ted Ted is a boy's name that serves two unrelated names at once, and it exists because medieval English moved the n from "mine Edward."
14,739 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
#401
Milton Milton means the mill settlement, and there is a second and quite separate source meaning the middle settlement — two entirely different Old English place names that ended up producing exactly the same modern spelling.
14,677 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
#407
Brent Brent means burned land, from ground cleared by fire — a place name recording a specific agricultural practice rather than a hill or a holy site, which are the two readings usually offered for it.
14,375 in the 1950s
#408
Sandy Sandy shortens Alexander and Alexandra, meaning defender of the people — and in Scotland it is the standard familiar form of Alexander, which is why it reads as Scottish rather than merely short.
14,357 in the 1950s
#409
Harvey Harvey is a boy's name of Breton origin meaning "battle worthy."
14,322 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
#412
Gerard Gerard is a boy's name from Germanic elements meaning brave with the spear.
14,235 in the 1950s
#413
Stuart Stuart means steward, and the office was literally the sty warden — keeper of the pigs — which rose to run the royal household and then supplied the name of a dynasty.
14,113 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
#415
Herman Herman means army man, and the German national hero Hermann is a Latin scribe's version of a Cheruscan name we cannot now recover — Arminius, the chief who destroyed three Roman legions in AD 9.
13,919 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
#419
Rex Rex means king, and it is the plain Latin nominative — which makes it the pair to Regis, the genitive meaning of the king.
13,543 in the 1950s
#420
Jamie Jamie is a unisex name of Hebrew origin, a Scottish diminutive of James meaning "supplanter" or "holder of the heel."
13,349 in the 1950s
#421
Arnold Arnold means eagle power, and England and Wales ranks it 631st on 59 births — well above the United States at 1,478th, which is not what the name's twentieth-century American associations would predict.
13,253 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
#423
Bob Bob comes from Robert, and the B is not a corruption but a system — medieval English made pet names by rhyming, which is why Rob gave Bob, Will gave Bill and Rick gave Dick.
12,932 in the 1950s
#424
Terrence Terrence descends from a Roman playwright who was born enslaved in North Africa — Terence was freed by his owner, wrote six comedies that survive complete, and shaped Latin prose style for centuries.
12,917 in the 1950s
#425
Chester Chester is a boy's name of Latin origin meaning "fortress" or "walled camp."
12,858 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
#427
Maurice Maurice is a boy's name from a Latin word meaning a Moor, originally describing someone from Roman North Africa. It is reviving, and it peaked in 1920 — a century-long gap of the same kind we see in Walter and Frances.
12,814 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
#430
Tyrone Tyrone means Eoghan's land, an Irish county, and it reached American use almost entirely through one actor — Tyrone Power, whose grandfather took the name from the county his family came from.
12,560 in the 1950s
#431
Nathaniel Nathaniel is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "gift of God."
12,517 in the 1950s
#432
Ruben Ruben is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "behold, a son."
12,495 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.