Humanverse

Baby names of 1926

Mary and Robert topped the lists in 1926, out of 2,295,906 births recorded across 9,335 different names. That is 1.6% fewer than the 1925 files hold. About 45,000 of them are alive today.

← 1925 All years 1927 →

Girls

#NameBirths
1Mary67,832
2Dorothy36,618
3Betty32,964
4Helen26,886
5Margaret23,072
6Ruth20,225
7Doris16,295
8Virginia16,161
9Mildred13,547
10Frances13,355
11Elizabeth12,837
12Jean12,168
13Evelyn11,780
14Shirley11,762
15Anna11,698
16Barbara11,079
17Alice10,956
18Marie10,629
19Lois9,816
20Gloria9,198
21Irene9,169
22Marjorie8,640
23Patricia8,586
24Martha8,556
25Rose8,509

All 200 girls’ names of 1926 (5,622 recorded)

Boys

#NameBirths
1Robert61,130
2John56,108
3James53,196
4William51,922
5Charles29,521
6George25,910
7Richard25,143
8Joseph23,756
9Donald20,912
10Edward19,375
11Thomas16,592
12Frank14,493
13Paul13,653
14Harold13,310
15Raymond12,809
16Jack12,195
17Walter11,774
18Kenneth10,342
19Henry9,994
20Arthur9,465
21Albert9,146
22David9,041
23Eugene9,016
24Ralph8,455
25Harry8,216

All 200 boys’ names of 1926 (4,837 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1925:

Sidney 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 1925:

Jonnie and Laurel 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 1926, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1926:

First recorded in 1926, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1926:

Adison 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.

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.