US baby names: the 1950s

Which baby names ruled the United States in the 1950s? In the Social Security Administration's public records, Mary led among girls with 625,606 babies registered over the decade, and James came first among boys with 843,768. In all, the decade added up to 19,234,376 girl registrations and 20,217,136 boy registrations; the tables below list the 100 most common names of each sex, with the official counts.

Girls' top 100 of the 1950s

Boys' top 100 of the 1950s

The picture of the 1950s

Against the previous decade, 8 names debuted in the girls' top 20: Deborah, Debra, Cynthia, Pamela, Diane and Brenda and 2 more; on the boys' side, the 4 newcomers were Mark, Steven, Daniel and Stephen.

Cathy made the biggest climb among girls, from rank 167 to 52; Kevin made the biggest climb among boys, from rank 167 to 27. Debra is the most distinctive girls' name of the 1950s: it reached rank 7 without even appearing among the previous decade's 200 most common names; on the other side, Ricky is the most distinctive boys' name of the 1950s: it reached rank 47 without even appearing among the previous decade's 200 most common names.

The 10 most common girls' names covered 21.3% of all girls registered, down from 24.0% in the previous decade; for boys, the top 10 accounted for 31.7%, down from 34.0% in the previous decade.

Compare with the 1940s, when Mary and James led, and with the 1960s, which crowned Lisa and Michael. 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