1970s Baby Names

14,967 names were given to children in the United States between 1970 and 1979, 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

#850
Hillary Hillary is a girl's name meaning "cheerful" or "happy," from the Latin hilaris.
4,168 in the 1970s
#852
Corinne Corinne is a girl's name from the Greek for a maiden, and it was borne by a poet said to have beaten Pindar five times in competition.
4,146 in the 1970s
#855
Leann
4,140 in the 1970s
#856
Lashonda
4,137 in the 1970s
#857
Gabriela Gabriela means God is my strength, and the archangel behind it is the one who announces rather than fights — Gabriel delivers the message in both Daniel and Luke, and in Islamic tradition brings the Qur'an.
4,125 in the 1970s
#859
Laurel Laurel names the plant directly, which sets it apart from Lora and Loren on this site — those reach the laurel through a Roman town, while this one is simply the tree.
4,109 in the 1970s
#860
Malinda
4,100 in the 1970s
#862
Isabel Isabel is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "God is my oath."
4,085 in the 1970s
#863
Shonda
4,074 in the 1970s
#866
Kimberlee
4,044 in the 1970s
#867
Karrie
4,040 in the 1970s
#868
Irma Irma means whole or complete, and it is the surviving fragment of much longer Germanic names — Irmgard and Irmintrud both begin with it, and only the first element outlasted them.
4,039 in the 1970s
#874
Pauline Pauline is a girl's name from the Latin for small or humble, the feminine of Paul.
4,011 in the 1970s
#877
Luz
3,987 in the 1970s
#879
Dora Dora means gift, and it is the end of several names rather than a name in its own right — Theodora, Isidora and Dorothea all supply it, and Dorothy means the same thing with the halves reversed.
3,959 in the 1970s
#880
Claire Claire is a girl's name of French origin meaning "clear" or "bright," from the Latin clarus.
3,957 in the 1970s
#882
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.
3,935 in the 1970s
#883
Esmeralda Esmeralda is not the character's name in the novel — Hugo's girl is christened Agnès and called Esmeralda for the green amulet she wears, so the name most readers know her by is a nickname.
3,925 in the 1970s
#885
Marcella Marcella means dedicated to Mars, and it is reviving — 948th in the United States, 1,386th in England and Wales, 1,507th in Canada and 6,569th in France, from a peak more than a century old.
3,907 in the 1970s
#887
Aubrey Aubrey is a name of Germanic origin meaning "elf ruler."
3,897 in the 1970s
#889
Lakesha
3,893 in the 1970s
#890
Nadine Nadine looks entirely French and is Russian underneath — it is Nadezhda, the ordinary Russian word for hope, borrowed into French and given a French ending.
3,889 in the 1970s
#893
Ladonna
3,867 in the 1970s
#894
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.
3,855 in the 1970s
#895
Katharine Katharine is the spelling closest to the Greek, and that Greek has never been explained — the pure gloss comes from a later association with katharos, clean, applied long after the name existed.
3,848 in the 1970s
#896
Phyllis Phyllis is a girl's name from the Greek for foliage, borne by a mythological princess who was turned into an almond tree.
3,842 in the 1970s
#899
Sue Sue means lily, shortened from Susan, and it is one of the steepest falls on record — from 5,306 American births in 1947 to 11, a decline by a factor of roughly 482.
3,838 in the 1970s
#900
Kisha
3,823 in the 1970s
#902
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.
3,803 in the 1970s
#903
Gabrielle Gabrielle is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "God is my strength," the French feminine of Gabriel.
3,798 in the 1970s
#905
Myra Myra was invented by a poet — Fulke Greville coined it around 1580, probably by rearranging Mary, and every later meaning attached to it was supplied after the fact.
3,781 in the 1970s
#910
Ingrid Ingrid carries a god's name — Ing, the Norse deity the Swedish kings claimed descent from, joined to a word meaning beautiful.
3,735 in the 1970s
#911
Antonia Antonia has no known meaning, and the flower reading given everywhere is a Renaissance invention — humanists attached the Greek anthos to a Roman family name that has never been explained.
3,733 in the 1970s
#912
Randi
3,724 in the 1970s
#915
Lucy Lucy is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "light," from lux.
3,706 in the 1970s
#916
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.
3,704 in the 1970s
#919
Janel
3,676 in the 1970s
#920
Bridgett
3,676 in the 1970s
#921
Karyn
3,671 in the 1970s
#924
Mandi
3,655 in the 1970s
#926
Olga Olga is a Norse name in Russian dress — Helga traveled east with the Varangians and became Olga, so the patron saint of Kyiv and Moscow carries a Scandinavian word meaning holy.
3,648 in the 1970s
#927
Lucinda Lucinda was invented by Cervantes — the name appears in Don Quixote in 1605 and has no record before it, which makes it one of the few names on this site with a datable author.
3,644 in the 1970s
#928
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.
3,640 in the 1970s
#929
Carissa
3,635 in the 1970s
#930
Genevieve Genevieve is a girl's name of Gaulish origin whose meaning is not settled.
3,634 in the 1970s
#933
Dolores Dolores is a girl's name meaning sorrows — taken from a title of the Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows, which counts seven specific griefs.
3,628 in the 1970s
#934
Tori Tori means victory through Victoria, and a separate Japanese tori means bird — the two are unrelated, and the shrine gates called torii are a third word again.
3,621 in the 1970s
#935
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.
3,609 in the 1970s

What Made a 1970s Name

Children in the United States were registered with it between 1970 and 1979. 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.