Brazilian baby names: the 1940s
Every Brazilian generation carries the names of its era, and the 1940s tell their own version of that story. 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 1,481,766 Brazilians, and Jose comes first among boys, with 647,405. 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 1940s
| # | Name | People |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Maria | 1,481,766 |
| 2 | Ana | 100,977 |
| 3 | Francisca | 91,326 |
| 4 | Antonia | 71,767 |
| 5 | Terezinha | 65,008 |
| 6 | Josefa | 60,811 |
| 7 | Raimunda | 49,705 |
| 8 | Tereza | 45,929 |
| 9 | Rosa | 42,033 |
| 10 | Luzia | 41,861 |
| 11 | Aparecida | 39,229 |
| 12 | Marlene | 36,932 |
| 13 | Vera | 32,090 |
| 14 | Joana | 31,703 |
| 15 | Rita | 31,346 |
| 16 | Helena | 31,056 |
| 17 | Benedita | 29,409 |
| 18 | Nair | 27,943 |
| 19 | Sebastiana | 27,799 |
| 20 | Elza | 27,470 |
Boys' top 20 of the 1940s
| # | Name | People |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jose | 647,405 |
| 2 | Antonio | 313,618 |
| 3 | Joao | 255,582 |
| 4 | Francisco | 160,300 |
| 5 | Manoel | 94,874 |
| 6 | Pedro | 86,798 |
| 7 | Sebastiao | 84,502 |
| 8 | Raimundo | 79,881 |
| 9 | Luiz | 74,055 |
| 10 | Paulo | 59,967 |
| 11 | Geraldo | 55,837 |
| 12 | Carlos | 53,319 |
| 13 | Luis | 47,955 |
| 14 | Benedito | 42,413 |
| 15 | Manuel | 40,519 |
| 16 | Joaquim | 40,009 |
| 17 | Jorge | 34,381 |
| 18 | Nelson | 32,043 |
| 19 | Severino | 29,702 |
| 20 | Mario | 28,977 |
What the 1940s changed
Against the previous decade, in the girls' top 20, Marlene and Vera made their debuts, pushing out Luiza and Alice; on the boys' side, Jorge made its debut, pushing out Osvaldo.
Aparecida made the biggest climb among girls, from rank 13 to 11; Paulo made the biggest climb among boys, from rank 14 to 10.
The margin at the top says a lot: Maria was registered 14.7 times as often as Ana, the second girls' name, a wider gap than the previous decade (13.3); among boys, Jose ran 2.1 times ahead of Antonio, in the same range as the previous decade.
Compare with the 1930s, when Maria and Jose led, and with the 1950s, 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