Baby names of 1918

Mary and John topped the lists in 1918, out of 2,171,111 births recorded across 9,303 different names. That is 8.2% more than the 1917 files hold. About 920 of them are alive today.

← 1917 All years 1919 →

Girls

#	Name	Births
1	Mary	67,365
2	Helen	36,148
3	Dorothy	32,030
4	Margaret	27,139
5	Ruth	25,535
6	Mildred	17,258
7	Virginia	16,421
8	Frances	16,132
9	Elizabeth	15,853
10	Anna	15,666
11	Evelyn	13,493
12	Marie	12,589
13	Alice	11,590
14	Florence	11,318
15	Lillian	9,986
16	Irene	9,774
17	Rose	9,568
18	Louise	9,111
19	Doris	9,061
20	Catherine	8,842
21	Betty	8,803
22	Gladys	8,734
23	Edna	8,698
24	Josephine	8,682
25	Martha	8,341

All 200 girls’ names of 1918 (5,585 recorded)

Boys

#	Name	Births
1	John	56,558
2	William	45,291
3	James	42,115
4	Robert	40,619
5	Charles	26,921
6	George	26,318
7	Joseph	26,261
8	Edward	19,489
9	Frank	17,018
10	Thomas	13,910
11	Walter	13,338
12	Richard	12,323
13	Harold	12,185
14	Paul	11,755
15	Raymond	11,604
16	Henry	11,354
17	Arthur	10,105
18	Donald	9,972
19	Albert	9,935
20	Harry	9,896
21	Jack	8,341
22	Ralph	8,162
23	Clarence	7,187
24	Louis	7,082
25	Carl	7,004

All 200 boys’ names of 1918 (4,813 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1917:

Jesse #1,507 → #960 +547
Liberty #1,079 → #585 +494
Marilynn #1,337 → #948 +389
Margueritte #1,281 → #969 +312
Syble #807 → #501 +306
Marylou #1,261 → #977 +284
Ellamae #1,205 → #930 +275
Sibyl #628 → #380 +248

Jesse 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 1917:

Quinton #1,092 → #492 +600
Pershing #876 → #334 +542
Quentin #723 → #243 +480
Issac #1,264 → #824 +440
Furman #1,092 → #753 +339
Lupe #1,238 → #902 +336
Virgle #1,203 → #882 +321
Eligah #1,238 → #918 +320

Lupe is here because the boys’ 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.

First recorded in 1918, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1918:

Marne 24
Claretha 12
Ardene 11
Carmeline 10
Theophila 10
Orletta 10
Peace 10
Bethyl 10
Lendora 10
Eldene 9

First recorded in 1918, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1918:

Foch 58
Marne 17
Joao 11
Clenard 11
Masatoshi 10
Spiros 10
Leron 10
Yoshiaki 10
Summer 9
Ld 9

Marne and Summer 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.