1960s Baby Names

10,861 names were given to children in the United States between 1960 and 1969, 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

#290
Kristin Kristin is a girl's name meaning a follower of Christ, and it is the smaller of a pair — Kristen holds 222,720 recorded births to its 181,344, and both charted only ever in America.
24,567 in the 1960s
#291
Carmen Carmen has two unrelated sources — the Latin word for a song, and a Spanish Marian title from Mount Carmel in Israel.
24,535 in the 1960s
#292
Sally Sally is a girl's name meaning princess, a pet form of Sarah reached by medieval rhyming.
24,422 in the 1960s
#293
Charlotte Charlotte is a girl's name of French origin meaning "free man," the feminine form of Charles, itself from the Germanic name Karl.
24,306 in the 1960s
#294
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.
24,185 in the 1960s
#297
Jeanne Jeanne is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "God is gracious," the French feminine of Jean.
23,595 in the 1960s
#300
Sara Sara is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "princess" or "noblewoman."
23,105 in the 1960s
#301
Tanya Tanya is a Russian pet form of Tatiana, whose meaning is not known — the Roman family name behind it may be Sabine rather than Latin, and the Sabine language is barely attested at all.
23,087 in the 1960s
#302
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.
23,003 in the 1960s
#309
Evelyn Evelyn is a girl's name of English and French origin meaning "desired" or "wished for".
22,683 in the 1960s
#311
Alicia Alicia is a girl's name of Germanic origin meaning "noble," a Latinate form of Alice.
22,486 in the 1960s
#315
Sonya Sonya means wisdom, and the Greek word behind it named a divine attribute before it named a person — Constantinople's great church was dedicated to Holy Wisdom, not to any saint called Sophia.
22,351 in the 1960s
#316
Lorraine Lorraine is a girl's name from the French region, whose own name means the kingdom of Lothair — a Frankish king's realm that was carved out of Charlemagne's empire and slowly disappeared.
22,320 in the 1960s
#319
Yvette Yvette is a girl's name from a Germanic word for the yew tree, by way of Breton.
22,163 in the 1960s
#320
Jeanette Jeanette means God is gracious, a French double diminutive of Jeanne.
22,154 in the 1960s
#321
Loretta Loretta comes from an Italian shrine, not from the laurel — Loreto is the town where the Holy House of Nazareth was said to have been carried by angels.
22,150 in the 1960s
#324
Joy Joy is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning exactly what it says, taken from the English word.
21,922 in the 1960s
#325
Sue Sue means lily, shortened from Susan, and it is one of the steepest falls in our data — from 5,306 American births in 1947 to 11, a decline by a factor of roughly 482.
21,640 in the 1960s
#326
Norma Norma is a girl's name that appears to have been invented for an opera — Bellini's Norma of 1831 — and it was the birth name of Marilyn Monroe, who appears elsewhere in these pages under the name that replaced it.
21,636 in the 1960s
#331
Roberta Roberta is a girl's name meaning bright fame, the feminine of Robert.
21,199 in the 1960s
#332
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.
21,046 in the 1960s
#335
Shari Shari means a plain, if it comes from Sharon — the Hebrew names the fertile coastal strip of Israel, so the rose of Sharon is a region's flower rather than a person's.
20,551 in the 1960s
#337
Jo Jo is a name serving as the short form of Joanne, Josephine and Joan for women and Joseph for men.
20,403 in the 1960s
#339
Natalie Natalie is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "birthday of the Lord," from natalis.
19,605 in the 1960s
#340
Tammie
19,408 in the 1960s
#347
Traci Traci is the most narrowly recorded name in this sweep — every one of its 52,406 births is American, it charts in no market in the current year, and its entire history runs from 1945 to a 1970 peak and down.
18,756 in the 1960s
#348
Gwendolyn Gwendolyn means white ring or blessed ring, from Welsh, and the second element is genuinely a ring — a torc or armlet, which was the standard Celtic mark of rank.
18,692 in the 1960s
#349
Nicole Nicole is a girl's name, the French feminine of Nicholas, meaning victory of the people.
18,643 in the 1960s
#351
Felicia Felicia means lucky, and the Latin felix meant fertile before it meant fortunate — the word originally described soil and livestock that produced well, and good fortune was a later extension of it.
18,596 in the 1960s
#353
Melody Melody is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "song" or "singing," from melodia.
18,517 in the 1960s
#354
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.
18,504 in the 1960s
#355
Marcia Marcia means dedicated to Mars, and that god's name is also where the month of March comes from — the Roman year began in March, because that was when the campaigning season opened up again after the winter.
18,472 in the 1960s
#356
Tami
18,462 in the 1960s
#357
Doris Doris is a girl's name from Greek mythology, where she is a sea nymph and the mother of the fifty Nereids.
18,314 in the 1960s
#358
Kristen Kristen is a girl's name meaning a follower of Christ, and in Denmark it is a man's name — the Danish Kristen is masculine and Kirsten the feminine.
18,268 in the 1960s
#359
Audrey Audrey is a girl's name of Old English origin meaning "noble strength," from Æthelthryth.
18,062 in the 1960s
#360
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.
17,756 in the 1960s
#363
Glenda Glenda is a twentieth-century Welsh invention rather than a traditional name — it joins two ordinary Welsh adjectives, and it does not appear in the historical record before about 1900.
17,644 in the 1960s
#365
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.
17,548 in the 1960s
#366
Amanda Amanda is a girl's name from the Latin for she who must be loved, and one of the few names on this site that can be dated to a specific literary invention — Colley Cibber used it for a character in his 1696 play Love's Last Shift.
17,227 in the 1960s
#367
Pam
17,126 in the 1960s
#368
Juanita Juanita is a girl's name meaning God is gracious, the Spanish diminutive of Juana.
17,054 in the 1960s
#369
Lynne Lynne now ranks 2155th in France and 14047th 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.
16,992 in the 1960s
#370
Dianne Dianne means divine, from the Roman goddess of the hunt — and Diana was originally a woodland deity of the Latin countryside, identified with the Greek Artemis only later and never completely.
16,957 in the 1960s
#371
Allison Allison is a girl's name of Norman French origin, from Alis — the medieval form of Alice — plus a diminutive ending.
16,928 in the 1960s
#372
Kelli Kelli respells Kelly, an Irish surname whose meaning is contested — bright-headed and strife are both proposed for Ó Ceallaigh, and neither has ever been established.
16,919 in the 1960s
#373
Kristi Kristi is the fifth spelling of this name to appear in our gap band — after Kristin, Kristen, Kristina and Kristine, all of them American-led despite the form being Scandinavian.
16,918 in the 1960s
#374
Cassandra Cassandra is a girl's name from Greek myth, borne by a prophet cursed to see the future and never be believed.
16,826 in the 1960s

What made a 1960s name

Nothing about the sound of it. A name is on this page because children in the United States were registered with it between 1960 and 1969, and its position is simply how many. Every list of "1960s 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.