Baby names of 1928

Mary and Robert topped the lists in 1928, out of 2,260,931 births recorded across 9,054 different names. That is 2.5% fewer than the 1927 files hold. About 88,000 of them are alive today.

← 1927 All years 1929 →

Girls

#	Name	Births
1	Mary	66,871
2	Betty	36,083
3	Dorothy	33,733
4	Helen	22,937
5	Margaret	20,295
6	Ruth	17,859
7	Doris	16,575
8	Barbara	14,872
9	Virginia	14,500
10	Shirley	14,215
11	Patricia	12,331
12	Jean	12,209
13	Frances	12,137
14	Elizabeth	11,767
15	Mildred	11,653
16	Anna	10,575
17	Evelyn	10,533
18	Lois	10,425
19	Alice	10,139
20	Dolores	9,615
21	Marie	9,286
22	Martha	8,252
23	Norma	8,166
24	Rose	8,161
25	Gloria	8,119

All 200 girls’ names of 1928 (5,440 recorded)

Boys

#	Name	Births
1	Robert	60,701
2	John	53,760
3	James	52,752
4	William	49,118
5	Charles	31,243
6	Richard	28,793
7	Donald	25,704
8	George	24,391
9	Joseph	22,322
10	Edward	18,492
11	Thomas	16,582
12	Frank	13,570
13	Paul	13,160
14	Harold	12,670
15	Jack	12,494
16	Raymond	11,946
17	Kenneth	11,167
18	Walter	10,651
19	David	9,990
20	Eugene	9,708
21	Henry	9,313
22	Arthur	8,880
23	Albert	8,812
24	Ralph	8,100
25	Herbert	8,065

All 200 boys’ names of 1928 (4,723 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1927:

Jeanine #3,053 → #888 +2,165
Joline #2,256 → #888 +1,368
Lorelei #2,095 → #994 +1,101
Jeannine #1,384 → #321 +1,063
Romona #1,456 → #597 +859
Jolene #1,669 → #994 +675
Charmaine #856 → #420 +436
Colette #1,278 → #967 +311

Biggest climbers, boys

Names that gained the most ground on 1927:

Fidencio #1,959 → #950 +1,009
Hoover #1,128 → #362 +766
Reyes #1,692 → #992 +700
Arlen #1,227 → #786 +441
Arland #1,372 → #980 +392
Burdette #1,350 → #963 +387
Wilfrid #1,322 → #938 +384
Hurley #1,322 → #992 +330

First recorded in 1928, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1928:

First recorded in 1928, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1928:

Lind 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.