Baby names of 1931

Mary and Robert topped the lists in 1931, out of 2,104,393 births recorded across 8,310 different names. That is 5.3% fewer than the 1930 files hold. About 191,000 of them are alive today.

← 1930 All years 1932 →

Girls

#	Name	Births
1	Mary	60,299
2	Betty	36,105
3	Dorothy	26,524
4	Barbara	21,804
5	Joan	19,119
6	Helen	17,664
7	Margaret	17,332
8	Patricia	16,469
9	Shirley	14,405
10	Doris	13,629
11	Ruth	13,132
12	Virginia	11,886
13	Jean	11,013
14	Dolores	10,807
15	Joyce	10,580
16	Elizabeth	10,292
17	Nancy	10,036
18	Frances	9,718
19	Marilyn	9,664
20	Lois	9,348
21	Alice	8,815
22	Norma	8,759
23	Gloria	8,546
24	Evelyn	8,492
25	Anna	8,429

All 200 girls’ names of 1931 (4,979 recorded)

Boys

#	Name	Births
1	Robert	60,519
2	James	51,212
3	John	48,423
4	William	43,280
5	Richard	31,822
6	Charles	29,934
7	Donald	29,100
8	George	20,685
9	Joseph	19,326
10	Thomas	16,847
11	Edward	15,646
12	Paul	12,255
13	David	11,784
14	Kenneth	11,568
15	Jack	11,488
16	Frank	11,472
17	Raymond	10,854
18	Harold	10,695
19	Billy	9,264
20	Walter	8,940
21	Eugene	8,151
22	Henry	7,805
23	Arthur	7,525
24	Albert	7,131
25	Ralph	6,960

All 200 boys’ names of 1931 (4,321 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1930:

Joretta #1,320 → #463 +857
Joetta #1,460 → #941 +519
Sondra #1,031 → #548 +483
Celine #1,460 → #995 +465
Lynne #1,274 → #931 +343
Verlene #1,251 → #912 +339
Ardelle #1,289 → #959 +330
Claudette #941 → #613 +328

Biggest climbers, boys

Names that gained the most ground on 1930:

Kenton #1,753 → #959 +794
Wyman #1,330 → #910 +420
Jan #1,330 → #922 +408
Leopold #1,399 → #997 +402
Odie #1,299 → #901 +398
Dell #1,235 → #841 +394
Kaye #1,330 → #939 +391
Arlis #1,299 → #939 +360

Jan and Kaye 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 1931, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1931:

First recorded in 1931, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1931:

Shirrell, Delynn and Sherill 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.

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.