Baby names of 1899

Mary and John topped the lists in 1899, out of 339,233 births recorded across 2,777 different names. That is 11.1% fewer than the 1898 files hold.

← 1898 All years 1900 →

Girls

#	Name	Births
1	Mary	13,172
2	Anna	5,115
3	Helen	5,048
4	Margaret	4,249
5	Ruth	3,912
6	Florence	3,314
7	Elizabeth	3,287
8	Marie	3,156
9	Ethel	2,999
10	Lillian	2,703
11	Edna	2,534
12	Alice	2,523
13	Emma	2,445
14	Clara	2,441
15	Grace	2,353
16	Bertha	2,294
17	Mildred	2,291
18	Annie	2,289
19	Bessie	2,280
20	Gladys	2,228
21	Rose	2,197
22	Mabel	2,127
23	Gertrude	2,110
24	Frances	2,058
25	Minnie	2,036

All 200 girls’ names of 1899 (1,842 recorded)

Boys

#	Name	Births
1	John	6,990
2	William	6,086
3	James	4,597
4	George	4,018
5	Charles	3,147
6	Joseph	2,679
7	Robert	2,609
8	Frank	2,550
9	Edward	1,901
10	Henry	1,831
11	Thomas	1,811
12	Walter	1,750
13	Harry	1,732
14	Arthur	1,357
15	Albert	1,210
16	Fred	1,182
17	Clarence	1,139
18	Willie	1,088
19	Harold	914
20	Roy	912
21	Paul	885
22	Raymond	869
23	Earl	821
24	Joe	780
25	Carl	774

All 200 boys’ names of 1899 (1,200 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1898:

Tula #1,700 → #728 +972
Josefina #1,700 → #835 +865
Lempi #1,700 → #878 +822
Villa #1,700 → #878 +822
Fae #1,502 → #728 +774
Margarete #1,700 → #935 +765
Margaretha #1,700 → #935 +765
Norene #1,700 → #983 +717

Biggest climbers, boys

Names that gained the most ground on 1898:

Rogers #1,121 → #481 +640
Edna #1,121 → #521 +600
Giles #1,002 → #457 +545
Sarah #1,121 → #613 +508
Thaddeus #885 → #424 +461
Huston #1,121 → #661 +460
Loy #1,121 → #661 +460
Elsie #1,121 → #661 +460

Edna, Sarah and Elsie are here because the boys’ file records them: the SSA publishes every name given to five or more babies of one sex, and a rank is a position within that list. It is not a claim about whose name it is.

First recorded in 1899, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1899:

Ardis 19
Irva 19
Thera 11
Vernita 10
Zeola 9
Erva 9
Jackie 9
Rosine 8
Gilma 8
Oza 7

First recorded in 1899, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1899:

Haven 9
Griffith 7
Vic 7
Elizah 6
Bynum 6
Colvin 6
Arlo 5
Goebel 5
Berlin 5
Ingvald 5

Haven, Elizah and Berlin are here because the boys’ file records them: the SSA publishes every name given to five or more babies of one sex, and a rank is a position within that list. It is not a claim about whose name it is.

Try it on yourself

Source: US Social Security Administration national baby-name files. Names given to fewer than five babies in a year are not published, so the totals here run below the true number of births. How far below is not the same in every year: the files hold 201,484 births for 1880 and 3,315,343 for 2025, so a change from one year to the next in the early decades is partly a change in what the record covers.