Baby names of 1927

Mary and Robert topped the lists in 1927, out of 2,319,346 births recorded across 9,267 different names. That is 1.0% more than the 1926 files hold. About 65,000 of them are alive today.

← 1926 All years 1928 →

Girls

#	Name	Births
1	Mary	70,642
2	Dorothy	35,993
3	Betty	35,424
4	Helen	25,316
5	Margaret	21,964
6	Ruth	19,412
7	Doris	16,512
8	Virginia	15,734
9	Shirley	13,314
10	Barbara	13,161
11	Mildred	13,053
12	Frances	12,988
13	Elizabeth	12,523
14	Jean	12,512
15	Evelyn	11,495
16	Anna	11,215
17	Alice	10,679
18	Patricia	10,554
19	Lois	10,505
20	Marie	10,317
21	Irene	8,606
22	Gloria	8,535
23	Rose	8,497
24	Martha	8,304
25	Marjorie	8,115

All 200 girls’ names of 1927 (5,602 recorded)

Boys

#	Name	Births
1	Robert	61,674
2	John	55,949
3	James	53,674
4	William	51,476
5	Charles	31,941
6	Richard	26,768
7	George	25,949
8	Donald	23,834
9	Joseph	23,503
10	Edward	19,115
11	Thomas	17,027
12	Frank	14,377
13	Paul	13,604
14	Harold	13,226
15	Raymond	12,807
16	Jack	12,802
17	Walter	11,346
18	Kenneth	10,848
19	Henry	9,871
20	Eugene	9,742
21	David	9,426
22	Arthur	9,338
23	Albert	9,128
24	Ralph	8,434
25	Harry	8,019

All 200 boys’ names of 1927 (4,802 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1926:

Charmaine #3,564 → #856 +2,708
Kazuko #2,474 → #955 +1,519
Valencia #2,076 → #924 +1,152
Cherie #1,414 → #863 +551
Lita #1,148 → #696 +452
Glendora #1,148 → #747 +401
Matilde #1,243 → #924 +319
Georgetta #1,303 → #990 +313

Biggest climbers, boys

Names that gained the most ground on 1926:

Lindbergh #2,436 → #573 +1,863
Lindy #1,353 → #387 +966
Sonny #1,565 → #964 +601
Akira #1,404 → #937 +467
Maria #1,432 → #990 +442
Elgin #1,192 → #799 +393
Clearence #1,242 → #892 +350
Eloy #1,219 → #898 +321

Lindy, Akira and Maria 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 1927, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1927:

First recorded in 1927, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1927:

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.