US baby names: the 1890s

Which baby names ruled the United States in the 1890s? In the Social Security Administration's public records, Mary led among girls with 131,138 babies registered over the decade, and John came first among boys with 80,664. In all, the decade added up to 2,221,561 girl registrations and 1,140,947 boy registrations; the tables below list the 100 most common names of each sex, with the official counts.

Girls' top 100 of the 1890s

Boys' top 100 of the 1890s

The picture of the 1890s

Against the previous decade, 5 names debuted in the girls' top 20: Helen, Ruth, Marie, Lillian and Edna; on the boys' side, the 2 newcomers were Willie and Roy.

Gladys made the biggest climb among girls, from rank 151 to 43; Cecil made the biggest climb among boys, from rank 187 to 100. The entire girls' top 100 already sat among the previous decade's 200 most common names; on the other side, Dewey is the most distinctive boys' name of the 1890s: it reached rank 94 without even appearing among the previous decade's 200 most common names.

The 10 most common girls' names covered 20.1% of all girls registered, down from 22.5% in the previous decade; for boys, the top 10 accounted for 36.1%, down from 41.3% in the previous decade.

Compare with the 1880s, when Mary and John led, and with the 1900s, which crowned Mary and John. The archive with every decade shows the whole timeline at once.

Source: Social Security Administration, public data. The series comes from Social Security number applications in the United States and starts in 1880; names with fewer than 5 occurrences in a year are excluded for privacy. Snapshot of 2026-07-10.

Last updated: 2026-07-13 · Methodology and sources