Baby names of 1940

Mary and James topped the lists in 1940, out of 2,302,700 births recorded across 7,988 different names. That is 4.5% more than the 1939 files hold. About 861,000 of them are alive today.

← 1939 All years 1941 →

Girls

#	Name	Births
1	Mary	56,216
2	Barbara	36,736
3	Patricia	32,665
4	Judith	22,385
5	Betty	22,077
6	Carol	21,759
7	Nancy	19,737
8	Linda	18,370
9	Shirley	17,881
10	Sandra	16,153
11	Margaret	15,063
12	Dorothy	14,875
13	Joyce	14,801
14	Joan	13,292
15	Carolyn	12,657
16	Judy	11,382
17	Sharon	11,121
18	Helen	10,203
19	Janet	10,105
20	Elizabeth	9,955
21	Virginia	9,554
22	Janice	9,318
23	Donna	9,232
24	Ruth	8,888
25	Marilyn	8,704

All 200 girls’ names of 1940 (5,028 recorded)

Boys

#	Name	Births
1	James	62,481
2	Robert	61,198
3	John	54,786
4	William	44,779
5	Richard	37,425
6	Charles	31,689
7	David	27,690
8	Thomas	23,991
9	Donald	23,115
10	Ronald	20,741
11	George	18,315
12	Joseph	18,208
13	Larry	17,199
14	Jerry	15,213
15	Kenneth	15,132
16	Edward	14,405
17	Paul	14,097
18	Michael	13,228
19	Gary	12,573
20	Frank	10,595
21	Gerald	10,236
22	Raymond	9,567
23	Harold	8,080
24	Dennis	7,845
25	Walter	7,723

All 200 boys’ names of 1940 (3,937 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1939:

Scarlett #3,429 → #935 +2,494
Lonna #2,206 → #741 +1,465
Pam #1,797 → #963 +834
Jody #1,638 → #979 +659
Laraine #1,474 → #841 +633
Christie #1,544 → #944 +600
Donita #1,585 → #989 +596
Suellen #1,149 → #585 +564

Biggest climbers, boys

Names that gained the most ground on 1939:

Whitney #1,458 → #893 +565
Gonzalo #1,297 → #850 +447
Weston #1,323 → #904 +419
Ashley #1,272 → #904 +368
Agustin #1,238 → #872 +366
Jeffery #836 → #510 +326
Toney #1,141 → #818 +323
Laurance #1,272 → #952 +320

Whitney and Ashley 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 1940, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1940:

Sierra 32
Lindola 13
Kathe 13
Tamera 13
Carloyn 13
Maeva 11
Scherrie 9
Bonni 9
Marcha 9
Rosslyn 9

First recorded in 1940, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1940:

Willkie 13
Lonney 9
Tarry 8
Lanning 7
Dalles 7
Wiltz 7
Scot 7
Delmond 6
Royer 6
Jeron 6

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.