US baby names: the 1940s

Every American decade leaves its mark on the registry books, and the 1940s are no exception. In the Social Security Administration's public records, Mary led among girls with 640,080 babies registered over the decade, and James came first among boys with 795,775. In all, the decade added up to 14,484,828 girl registrations and 14,886,857 boy registrations; the tables below list the 100 most common names of each sex, with the official counts.

Girls' top 100 of the 1940s

Boys' top 100 of the 1940s

The picture of the 1940s

Against the previous decade, 10 names debuted in the girls' top 20: Linda, Sandra, Sharon, Judith, Susan and Carolyn and 4 more; on the boys' side, the 5 newcomers were Michael, Larry, Gary, Jerry and Dennis.

Cynthia made the biggest climb among girls, from rank 191 to 47; Mark made the biggest climb among boys, from rank 183 to 54. Brenda is the most distinctive girls' name of the 1940s: it reached rank 26 without even appearing among the previous decade's 200 most common names; on the other side, Steven is the most distinctive boys' name of the 1940s: it reached rank 29 without even appearing among the previous decade's 200 most common names.

The 10 most common girls' names covered 24.0% of all girls registered, up from 22.9% in the previous decade; for boys, the top 10 accounted for 34.0%, up from 33.3% in the previous decade.

Compare with the 1930s, when Mary and Robert led, and with the 1950s, which crowned Mary and James. 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