Brazilian baby names: the 1930s
Anyone born in Brazil in the 1930s has a good chance of answering to one of the names on this page. In the open data of IBGE, Brazil's national statistics institute, collected in the 2010 Census, Maria leads among girls born in that decade, with 746,057 Brazilians, and Jose comes first among boys, with 310,427. The tables below list each sex's top 20 with the official frequencies, and the analysis that follows shows what changed from the previous decade.
Girls' top 20 of the 1930s
| # | Name | People |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Maria | 746,057 |
| 2 | Ana | 55,984 |
| 3 | Francisca | 49,796 |
| 4 | Terezinha | 44,762 |
| 5 | Antonia | 42,309 |
| 6 | Josefa | 37,012 |
| 7 | Raimunda | 30,896 |
| 8 | Tereza | 30,447 |
| 9 | Rosa | 25,867 |
| 10 | Luzia | 23,389 |
| 11 | Joana | 23,097 |
| 12 | Nair | 21,517 |
| 13 | Aparecida | 20,316 |
| 14 | Benedita | 19,311 |
| 15 | Sebastiana | 19,266 |
| 16 | Rita | 18,991 |
| 17 | Helena | 18,783 |
| 18 | Luiza | 16,900 |
| 19 | Elza | 16,517 |
| 20 | Alice | 16,121 |
Boys' top 20 of the 1930s
| # | Name | People |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jose | 310,427 |
| 2 | Antonio | 152,996 |
| 3 | Joao | 141,530 |
| 4 | Francisco | 78,062 |
| 5 | Manoel | 59,927 |
| 6 | Pedro | 49,057 |
| 7 | Sebastiao | 44,910 |
| 8 | Raimundo | 41,683 |
| 9 | Luiz | 31,039 |
| 10 | Geraldo | 29,527 |
| 11 | Joaquim | 27,443 |
| 12 | Manuel | 26,249 |
| 13 | Benedito | 23,435 |
| 14 | Paulo | 20,701 |
| 15 | Luis | 20,317 |
| 16 | Carlos | 15,586 |
| 17 | Nelson | 15,386 |
| 18 | Mario | 15,039 |
| 19 | Osvaldo | 14,763 |
| 20 | Severino | 14,558 |
What the 1930s changed
Maria opens the series with a lead that looks unbelievable today: 13.3 times the frequency of the second girls' name, Ana. Among boys, Jose led with 2.0 times the frequency of Antonio. This is the decade when Brazil's Catholic tradition of compound names built on Maria and José weighed heaviest in the registries.
A note on the sample: since the count comes from the 2010 Census, this decade reflects only the people born in it who were still alive in Brazil in 2010. The names are faithful; the volumes are a portrait of the survivors.
Compare with the 1940s, which crowned Maria and Jose. The archive The names of Brazil shows the whole timeline at once.
Source: IBGE (Brazil's national statistics institute), 2010 Census, open data. The numbers come from the 2010 Demographic Census and count people alive and living in Brazil that year, grouped by their decade of birth: the oldest decades reflect only those who made it to 2010. Everything here is aggregate public statistics, with no individual records. Snapshot of 2026-07-10.
Last updated: · Methodology and sources