1970s Baby Names

25,022 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

#769
Loren Loren means from Laurentum, a town rather than a plant — the laurel reading came second, and the town itself was probably named for its laurels, so the connection is real but runs the long way round.
4,961 in the 1970s
#770
Nakia
4,934 in the 1970s 7 of 10 years
#771
Marci
4,927 in the 1970s
#772
Nick Nick means victory of the people, and the compound is political rather than personal — the Greek joins victory to the citizen body, so it describes a public triumph and not an individual one.
4,922 in the 1970s
#773
Austin Austin is a boy's name that began as a medieval English contraction of Augustine, meaning "venerable" or "majestic," from the Latin augustus.
4,921 in the 1970s
#774
Andres Andres is a boy's name of Greek origin meaning "manly" or "brave."
4,909 in the 1970s
#775
Hollie Hollie is a girl's name from the holly tree, whose name comes from a word meaning "prickly" rather than anything festive.
4,900 in the 1970s
#776
Morgan Morgan is a Welsh name meaning sea-born, and it charts in all seven markets within a range of just over three hundred places — one of the most evenly distributed names on this site.
4,898 in the 1970s
#777
Doris Doris is a girl's name from Greek mythology, where she is a sea nymph and the mother of the fifty Nereids.
4,884 in the 1970s
#778
Tom Tom is a boy's name of Aramaic origin meaning "twin," a short form of Thomas used as a full name across Europe.
4,882 in the 1970s
#779
Carlton Carlton means the settlement of the free peasants, and the word for those peasants became an insult — ceorl gave English churl and churlish, so the name preserves a class that the language later turned against.
4,859 in the 1970s
#780
Serena Serena has the most evenly spread ranking on this site — Scotland 298th, Ireland 310th, the United States 325th, France 330th and England and Wales 381st, five markets inside 83 places of each other.
4,849 in the 1970s
#781
Constance Constance is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "steadfastness," one of the abstract virtue names the early Church favored.
4,846 in the 1970s
#782
Selena Selena means the moon, and its curve has a shape we see nowhere else — American births went 918 in 1994 to 3,840 in 1995, the year Selena Quintanilla was killed on 31 March, then fell back to 2,296 the next year.
4,843 in the 1970s
#783
Terrell
4,843 in the 1970s
#784
Kenny Kenny sits on top of two different Gaelic names that English collapsed into one — Cináed, born of fire, and Coinneach, handsome.
4,836 in the 1970s
#785
Daphne Daphne is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "laurel tree."
4,827 in the 1970s
#786
Paige Paige is a girl's name from a medieval job title meaning a young male servant, and it reached women by way of a surname.
4,827 in the 1970s
#787
Bridgette
4,822 in the 1970s
#788
Tammi
4,815 in the 1970s
#789
Terence Terence has no known meaning, and its most famous bearer was a slave — the playwright Terence was North African, brought to Rome, freed, and became one of the two Latin comic dramatists whose work survives.
4,805 in the 1970s
#790
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.
4,801 in the 1970s
#791
Margarita Margarita means pearl, and it names both a cocktail and a pizza — the pizza for Queen Margherita of Italy, the drink by a route nobody has ever settled.
4,799 in the 1970s
#792
Jamal
4,786 in the 1970s
#793
Jeanine Jeanine means God is gracious, and it is a French elaboration of Jeanne — which makes it a feminine of a feminine, three derivations away from the Hebrew name it carries.
4,772 in the 1970s
#794
Terra
4,766 in the 1970s
#795
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.
4,760 in the 1970s
#796
Allyson Allyson descends from Alice by way of a French diminutive, and it is not Alice plus son — the ending is the Old French -on, the same one behind Marion, and nothing in it refers to a child.
4,756 in the 1970s
#797
Brady Brady means descendant of Brádach, an Irish byname whose own meaning is not settled — spirited, large-chested and broad-eyed are all proposed, and none is established.
4,740 in the 1970s
#798
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.
4,730 in the 1970s
#799
Elisabeth Elisabeth is a girl's name meaning God is my oath, and the s-spelling is the older one — it follows the Greek and German, while the English z is a later change.
4,719 in the 1970s
#800
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.
4,714 in the 1970s
#801
Iris Iris is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "rainbow."
4,712 in the 1970s
#802
Lena Lena is a girl's name used as a short form of Helena, Magdalena and Elena, so it usually carries the sense "light" or "torch."
4,691 in the 1970s
#803
Jillian Jillian means youthful, and it descends from the same Roman family name as July — Julius, Julia, Jill and Jillian all come from the gens that claimed descent from Venus.
4,685 in the 1970s
#804
Lakeisha
4,682 in the 1970s
#805
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.
4,681 in the 1970s
#806
Latanya
4,668 in the 1970s
#807
Aisha Aisha is a girl's name of Arabic origin meaning "living" or "alive."
4,658 in the 1970s
#808
Quincy Quincy is a unisex name of Norman French origin meaning "estate of Quintus".
4,657 in the 1970s
#809
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.
4,654 in the 1970s
#810
Tia Tia peaked far higher in England than its population would predict — 1,050 births in England and Wales in 2004 against an American peak of 1,189, in a country with roughly a fifth of the people.
4,638 in the 1970s
#811
Alissa Alissa means noble, and the flower it resembles was named for rabies — alyssum joins the Greek negative to lyssa, madness, because the plant was believed to cure the bite of a mad dog.
4,633 in the 1970s
#812
Marcos Marcos means dedicated to Mars, and the god behind it was not only a war god — Mars presided over agriculture too, which is coherent once you notice that farming and fighting were the same men's seasonal work.
4,625 in the 1970s
#813
Sophia Sophia is a girl's name of Greek origin meaning "wisdom," taken directly from the Greek word sophía.
4,586 in the 1970s
#814
Sam Sam is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "God has heard," a short form of Samuel.
4,585 in the 1970s
#815
Matt
4,569 in the 1970s
#816
Hannah Hannah is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "grace" or "favor," from Channah.
4,550 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.