US baby names: the 1920s

Which baby names ruled the United States in the 1920s? In the Social Security Administration's public records, Mary led among girls with 701,755 babies registered over the decade, and Robert came first among boys with 576,374. In all, the decade added up to 11,952,683 girl registrations and 11,019,370 boy registrations; the tables below list the 100 most common names of each sex, with the official counts.

Girls' top 100 of the 1920s

Boys' top 100 of the 1920s

The picture of the 1920s

Against the previous decade, 6 names debuted in the girls' top 20: Betty, Doris, Jean, Shirley, Barbara and Marjorie; on the boys' side, the 2 newcomers were Jack and Kenneth.

Joan made the biggest climb among girls, from rank 199 to 60; Calvin made the biggest climb among boys, from rank 160 to 80. Gloria is the most distinctive girls' name of the 1920s: it reached rank 40 without even appearing among the previous decade's 200 most common names; on the other side, Billy is the most distinctive boys' name of the 1920s: it reached rank 48 without even appearing among the previous decade's 200 most common names.

The 10 most common girls' names covered 22.7% of all girls registered, in the same range as the previous decade; for boys, the top 10 accounted for 32.5%, up from 30.8% in the previous decade.

Compare with the 1910s, when Mary and John led, and with the 1930s, which crowned Mary and Robert. 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