Humanverse

Baby names of 1901

Mary and John topped the lists in 1901, out of 345,812 births recorded across 2,901 different names. That is 23.2% fewer than the 1900 files hold.

← 1900 All years 1902 →

Girls

#NameBirths
1Mary13,136
2Helen5,247
3Anna4,923
4Margaret4,424
5Ruth3,974
6Elizabeth3,216
7Marie3,157
8Florence3,131
9Ethel3,067
10Lillian2,681
11Gladys2,676
12Alice2,562
13Edna2,488
14Mildred2,424
15Grace2,398
16Annie2,396
17Emma2,374
18Clara2,319
19Bertha2,257
20Rose2,212
21Bessie2,183
22Dorothy2,173
23Mabel2,097
23Hazel2,097
25Frances2,071

All 200 girls’ names of 1901 (1,943 recorded)

Boys

#NameBirths
1John6,900
2William5,990
3James4,735
4George3,609
5Charles3,049
6Joseph2,766
7Robert2,543
8Frank2,402
9Edward1,917
10Henry1,870
11Thomas1,820
12Walter1,718
13Harry1,594
14Arthur1,329
15Albert1,317
16Willie1,294
17Clarence1,196
18Fred1,133
19Paul924
20Roy917
21Harold915
22Raymond888
23Earl818
24Carl817
25Louis797

All 200 boys’ names of 1901 (1,210 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1900:

Dannie is here because the girls’ file records it: 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.

Biggest climbers, boys

Names that gained the most ground on 1900:

Julia, Ashley and Augusta 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 1901, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1901:

First recorded in 1901, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1901:

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.