Baby names of 1929

Mary and Robert topped the lists in 1929, out of 2,192,176 births recorded across 8,714 different names. That is 3.0% fewer than the 1928 files hold. About 116,000 of them are alive today.

← 1928 All years 1930 →

Girls

#	Name	Births
1	Mary	63,512
2	Betty	36,675
3	Dorothy	31,476
4	Helen	20,983
5	Margaret	19,212
6	Doris	16,498
7	Barbara	16,038
8	Ruth	16,021
9	Shirley	14,576
10	Patricia	13,624
11	Virginia	13,234
12	Jean	11,865
13	Joan	11,666
14	Dolores	11,508
15	Elizabeth	11,248
16	Frances	11,093
17	Lois	10,295
18	Mildred	10,255
19	Evelyn	9,886
20	Anna	9,751
21	Alice	9,480
22	Marie	9,158
23	Joyce	8,596
24	Phyllis	7,995
25	Norma	7,893

All 200 girls’ names of 1929 (5,277 recorded)

Boys

#	Name	Births
1	Robert	59,807
2	James	52,135
3	John	52,112
4	William	47,815
5	Charles	29,930
6	Richard	29,572
7	Donald	27,181
8	George	23,020
9	Joseph	21,165
10	Edward	17,220
11	Thomas	16,272
12	Frank	12,966
13	Paul	12,431
14	Jack	12,167
15	Raymond	11,909
16	Harold	11,677
17	David	11,302
18	Kenneth	10,841
19	Walter	9,850
20	Eugene	9,046
21	Henry	8,571
22	Arthur	8,470
23	Billy	8,320
24	Albert	8,078
25	Herbert	7,881

All 200 boys’ names of 1929 (4,545 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1928:

Dorla #2,623 → #672 +1,951
Ingrid #1,738 → #941 +797
Sydell #1,502 → #968 +534
Elenor #1,502 → #981 +521
Jeanine #888 → #482 +406
Carrol #1,290 → #895 +395
Margene #1,310 → #922 +388
Nannette #1,338 → #994 +344

Carrol 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 1928:

Davey #2,843 → #655 +2,188
Davie #1,413 → #859 +554
Derald #1,095 → #721 +374
Vernal #1,353 → #995 +358
Ken #1,228 → #878 +350
Ocie #1,228 → #888 +340
Judge #1,323 → #983 +340
Esteban #1,228 → #900 +328

Ocie 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 1929, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1929:

First recorded in 1929, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1929:

Daune 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.