Baby names of 1919

Mary and John topped the lists in 1919, out of 2,110,239 births recorded across 9,305 different names. That is 2.8% fewer than the 1918 files hold. About 1,700 of them are alive today.

← 1918 All years 1920 →

Girls

#	Name	Births
1	Mary	65,836
2	Helen	33,706
3	Dorothy	31,733
4	Margaret	26,238
5	Ruth	24,562
6	Mildred	17,300
7	Virginia	15,636
8	Elizabeth	15,287
9	Frances	15,106
10	Anna	14,498
11	Evelyn	13,321
12	Marie	12,008
13	Alice	11,141
14	Florence	10,482
15	Betty	10,106
16	Irene	9,712
17	Lillian	9,516
18	Doris	9,433
19	Rose	9,195
20	Louise	8,812
21	Gladys	8,717
22	Edna	8,404
23	Catherine	8,335
24	Ruby	8,334
25	Martha	8,322

All 200 girls’ names of 1919 (5,559 recorded)

Boys

#	Name	Births
1	John	53,522
2	William	43,969
3	James	42,392
4	Robert	41,025
5	Charles	25,192
6	George	25,170
7	Joseph	24,266
8	Edward	18,536
9	Frank	15,701
10	Thomas	13,434
11	Walter	12,879
12	Richard	12,441
13	Harold	12,021
14	Raymond	11,384
15	Paul	11,305
16	Henry	10,613
17	Donald	9,904
18	Albert	9,607
19	Arthur	9,540
20	Harry	8,990
21	Jack	8,263
22	Ralph	7,709
23	Willie	6,942
24	Howard	6,843
25	Clarence	6,825

All 200 boys’ names of 1919 (4,810 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1918:

Gregoria #1,805 → #954 +851
Concha #1,333 → #890 +443
Arlena #1,299 → #909 +390
Marina #1,255 → #902 +353
Roselle #1,333 → #1,000 +333
Soledad #1,333 → #1,000 +333
Oneida #1,214 → #882 +332
Margurite #1,153 → #850 +303

Biggest climbers, boys

Names that gained the most ground on 1918:

Quinten #1,313 → #867 +446
Dempsey #1,012 → #580 +432
Winton #1,231 → #890 +341
Donnie #1,211 → #877 +334
Edsel #1,062 → #730 +332
Aurelio #1,286 → #959 +327
Ardell #1,231 → #927 +304
Lenord #1,256 → #973 +283

Ardell 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 1919, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1919:

Tokie 12
Micheline 11
Lucenda 11
Julina 10
Faythe 10
Marquita 10
Nonia 10
Clarcie 9
Delsia 9
Emelina 9

First recorded in 1919, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1919:

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.