US baby names: the 1900s

If you were born in the United States in the 1900s, what name would most likely sit on your birth certificate? In the Social Security Administration's public records, Mary led among girls with 161,504 babies registered over the decade, and John came first among boys with 84,590. In all, the decade added up to 2,927,552 girl registrations and 1,357,571 boy registrations; the tables below list the 100 most common names of each sex, with the official counts.

Girls' top 100 of the 1900s

Boys' top 100 of the 1900s

The picture of the 1900s

Against the previous decade, 5 names debuted in the girls' top 20: Dorothy, Mildred, Gladys, Frances and Rose; on the boys' side, the 2 newcomers were Harold and Paul.

Thelma made the biggest climb among girls, from rank 169 to 41; Kenneth made the biggest climb among boys, from rank 125 to 53. Opal is the most distinctive girls' name of the 1900s: it reached rank 98 without even appearing among the previous decade's 200 most common names; on the other side, the entire boys' top 100 already sat among the previous decade's 200 most common names.

The 10 most common girls' names covered 20.0% of all girls registered, down from 20.1% in the previous decade; for boys, the top 10 accounted for 32.6%, down from 36.1% in the previous decade.

Compare with the 1890s, when Mary and John led, and with the 1910s, 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