1960s Baby Names

10,954 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

#379
Erin Erin is a girl's name of Irish origin meaning "Ireland."
16,518 in the 1960s
#380
Darla Darla is a girl's name coined in twentieth-century America from the word darling.
16,356 in the 1960s
#381
Ronda
16,354 in the 1960s
#382
Kimberley Kimberley is named for a woman — the English place name behind it is Cyneburg's clearing, and Cyneburg was a seventh-century Mercian princess, so the name reaches modern use through her land rather than a man's.
16,344 in the 1960s
#388
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.
15,903 in the 1960s
#392
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.
15,705 in the 1960s
#394
Irene Irene is a girl's name from the Greek word for peace, and the name of the goddess who personified it.
15,499 in the 1960s
#397
Robyn Robyn is a girl's name of Germanic origin meaning "bright fame."
15,353 in the 1960s
#400
Rosa Rosa is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "rose."
15,142 in the 1960s
#401
Christy Christy serves both Christine and Christopher, so it is used for both sexes — 98 percent of recorded births are female, but the masculine use remains ordinary in Ireland.
14,951 in the 1960s
#404
Doreen Doreen has two possible parents and neither is settled — an Irish Doireann whose own meaning is disputed, or Dora with an Irish diminutive attached, which would make it a nineteenth-century construction.
14,707 in the 1960s
#405
Constance Constance is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "steadfastness," one of the abstract virtue names the early Church favored.
14,704 in the 1960s
#408
Rosemary Rosemary is not Rose and Mary joined together — it is the herb, from a Latin phrase meaning dew of the sea.
14,652 in the 1960s
#410
Tara Tara is a girl's name from the hill in County Meath where the High Kings were inaugurated, and its meaning is a place of assembly.
14,583 in the 1960s
#413
Bridget Bridget means exalted one, and it belonged to a goddess before a saint — Brigid was the Irish deity of poetry, smithcraft and healing, and the saint absorbed her feast, her fire and her attributes.
14,483 in the 1960s
#414
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.
14,356 in the 1960s
#417
Lora Lora means from Laurentum, and the laurel is one step removed — the Roman town was named for its bay trees, and the personal name says which town you came from rather than which plant crowned you.
14,221 in the 1960s
#418
Vivian Vivian is a name of Latin origin meaning "alive" or "lively," from vivus.
14,111 in the 1960s
#429
Jessica Jessica is a girl's name invented by Shakespeare for The Merchant of Venice in 1596.
13,726 in the 1960s
#433
Eva Eva is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "life" or "living."
13,631 in the 1960s
#434
Roxanne Roxanne means dawn or bright, and it is Persian rather than Greek — Alexander married Roxana in Bactria, and she and their son were murdered after his death.
13,583 in the 1960s
#437
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.
13,387 in the 1960s
#438
Lois Lois is a girl's name that appears once in the New Testament, in a letter naming Timothy's grandmother, and its meaning has never been established.
13,345 in the 1960s
#440
Danielle Danielle is a girl's name, the French feminine of Daniel, from a Hebrew name meaning God is my judge.
13,209 in the 1960s
#441
Kellie Kellie has no settled meaning — the Irish Ceallach has been read as bright-headed, as strife, and as one who frequents churches, and the three readings are not close to reconciling.
13,202 in the 1960s
#444
Angie Angie means messenger, and the Greek root behind it named someone carrying news — the wings and choirs of later Christianity all grew from an ordinary occupational word.
13,052 in the 1960s
#445
Marlene Marlene was invented by the woman who made it famous — Marie Magdalene Dietrich contracted her own two names into one.
12,985 in the 1960s
#446
Sonia Sonia is not a name in its own right in Russian — it is the everyday pet form of Sofia, and it means wisdom.
12,982 in the 1960s
#447
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.
12,980 in the 1960s
#448
Lauren Lauren is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "laurel," which became a women's name because a film studio invented one.
12,955 in the 1960s
#452
Lynette Lynette entered English through Tennyson, who reshaped a Welsh name for the Idylls of the King — Luned became Lynette, and the spelling he used is the one that survived.
12,775 in the 1960s
#453
Leah Leah is a girl's name of Hebrew origin whose meaning is disputed, most often given as "weary" but also linked to a word for wild cow.
12,775 in the 1960s
#455
Kristina Kristina means a follower of Christ, the Scandinavian and Slavic form of Christina.
12,732 in the 1960s
#458
Sherrie
12,535 in the 1960s
#459
Sabrina Sabrina is the Latin name of the River Severn, and the legend behind it is a drowning — a princess thrown into the river became its spirit.
12,485 in the 1960s
#461
Emily Emily is a girl's name of Latin origin, from the Roman family name Aemilius.
12,337 in the 1960s
#462
Katrina Katrina has no securely known meaning, because Catherine does not — the Greek original has never been derived, and the pure reading was attached centuries later by a false association.
12,299 in the 1960s
#464
Alison Alison means little Alice, and Alice means noble — but the Norman name behind it is a heavy compression of the Germanic Adalheidis, so the noble is all that survived of a longer compound.
12,255 in the 1960s
#468
Monique Monique is a girl's name, the French form of Monica, whose meaning is unknown despite the confident answers usually given for it.
11,997 in the 1960s
#469
Marianne Marianne is the personification of the French Republic, and her bust stands in every town hall in France — so the name carries a civic weight in one market that it has nowhere else.
11,973 in the 1960s
#471
Cheri
11,942 in the 1960s
#476
Janine Janine means God is gracious, a French elaboration of Jeanne, and it charts in four markets on very small numbers — 2,683rd in Canada, 5,880th in the United States, 7,199th in France and 7,480th in England and Wales.
11,769 in the 1960s
#478
Lydia Lydia is a girl's name meaning "woman from Lydia," an ancient kingdom in what is now western Turkey.
11,737 in the 1960s
#479
Ginger Ginger reached English from Sanskrit by way of four languages — shringavera, horn-root, named for the rhizome's antler shape, and every step of that journey is documented.
11,712 in the 1960s
#480
Jana Jana ranks 223rd in France and 1,245th in the United States, and its French peak of 485 births came in 2019 — a Slavic form of John that is currently doing better in France than in any English-speaking market.
11,621 in the 1960s
#481
Leigh Leigh means a woodland clearing, and the same word is hiding at the end of dozens of modern names — the -leigh in Kayleigh and Ashlyn's cousins is this word, borrowed for its sound rather than its sense.
11,473 in the 1960s
#484
Tracie
11,385 in the 1960s
#485
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.
11,357 in the 1960s

What Made a 1960s Name

Children in the United States were registered with it between 1960 and 1969. 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.