Brazilian baby names: the 1950s
The portrait of Brazil's 1950s fits in forty names, twenty for each sex. 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 2,469,011 Brazilians, and Jose comes first among boys, with 1,080,656. 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 1950s
| # | Name | People |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Maria | 2,469,011 |
| 2 | Ana | 183,505 |
| 3 | Francisca | 113,563 |
| 4 | Vera | 112,229 |
| 5 | Sonia | 92,420 |
| 6 | Antonia | 91,470 |
| 7 | Terezinha | 84,680 |
| 8 | Marlene | 74,616 |
| 9 | Aparecida | 73,702 |
| 10 | Lucia | 71,517 |
| 11 | Josefa | 70,275 |
| 12 | Rosa | 66,994 |
| 13 | Raimunda | 59,007 |
| 14 | Luzia | 56,920 |
| 15 | Rita | 55,046 |
| 16 | Tereza | 54,579 |
| 17 | Fatima | 54,432 |
| 18 | Regina | 52,096 |
| 19 | Sueli | 48,882 |
| 20 | Sandra | 45,100 |
Boys' top 20 of the 1950s
| # | Name | People |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jose | 1,080,656 |
| 2 | Antonio | 489,579 |
| 3 | Joao | 395,857 |
| 4 | Francisco | 263,008 |
| 5 | Paulo | 162,908 |
| 6 | Luiz | 162,189 |
| 7 | Carlos | 153,768 |
| 8 | Pedro | 126,016 |
| 9 | Raimundo | 116,198 |
| 10 | Manoel | 115,900 |
| 11 | Luis | 113,244 |
| 12 | Sebastiao | 112,504 |
| 13 | Jorge | 99,295 |
| 14 | Geraldo | 80,679 |
| 15 | Roberto | 56,471 |
| 16 | Benedito | 54,313 |
| 17 | Sergio | 53,126 |
| 18 | Mario | 50,343 |
| 19 | Manuel | 49,572 |
| 20 | Joaquim | 45,780 |
What the 1950s changed
Against the previous decade, in the girls' top 20, Sonia, Lucia, Fatima, Regina, Sueli and Sandra made their debuts, pushing out Joana, Helena, Benedita, Nair, Sebastiana and Elza; on the boys' side, Roberto and Sergio made their debuts, pushing out Nelson and Severino.
Vera made the biggest climb among girls, from rank 13 to 4; Paulo made the biggest climb among boys, from rank 10 to 5.
The margin at the top says a lot: Maria was registered 13.5 times as often as Ana, the second girls' name, a narrower gap than the previous decade (14.7); among boys, Jose ran 2.2 times ahead of Antonio, a wider gap than the previous decade (2.1).
Compare with the 1940s, when Maria and Jose led, and with the 1960s, 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