Baby names of 1941

Mary and James topped the lists in 1941, out of 2,436,437 births recorded across 8,085 different names. That is 5.8% more than the 1940 files hold. About 994,000 of them are alive today.

← 1940 All years 1942 →

Girls

#	Name	Births
1	Mary	58,048
2	Barbara	39,543
3	Patricia	36,905
4	Carol	24,187
5	Linda	23,721
6	Judith	23,320
7	Betty	20,905
8	Nancy	20,885
9	Sandra	19,500
10	Shirley	16,954
11	Carolyn	16,273
12	Margaret	15,696
13	Joyce	15,684
14	Dorothy	14,566
15	Sharon	14,272
16	Judy	13,968
17	Joan	13,380
18	Janet	11,136
19	Karen	10,831
20	Donna	10,446
21	Elizabeth	10,267
22	Janice	10,061
23	Virginia	10,043
24	Helen	9,887
25	Martha	9,156

All 200 girls’ names of 1941 (5,085 recorded)

Boys

#	Name	Births
1	James	66,751
2	Robert	64,247
3	John	57,520
4	William	47,798
5	Richard	39,112
6	Charles	32,742
7	David	30,553
8	Thomas	26,641
9	Ronald	24,407
10	Donald	22,641
11	Larry	20,134
12	Joseph	19,808
13	George	19,260
14	Jerry	16,799
15	Kenneth	16,143
16	Michael	15,935
17	Edward	15,580
18	Paul	15,166
19	Gary	14,568
20	Gerald	10,942
21	Frank	10,795
22	Raymond	9,951
23	Dennis	9,562
24	Harold	8,102
25	Roger	8,095

All 200 boys’ names of 1941 (4,002 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1940:

Jerilyn #2,737 → #607 +2,130
Trina #2,109 → #851 +1,258
Karan #1,347 → #975 +372
Kristine #1,313 → #942 +371
Sherri #1,186 → #830 +356
Eloisa #1,272 → #924 +348
Delilah #1,150 → #809 +341
Lesley #1,313 → #975 +338

Biggest climbers, boys

Names that gained the most ground on 1940:

Gay #1,573 → #987 +586
Issac #1,251 → #876 +375
Otho #1,334 → #971 +363
Lawrance #1,208 → #870 +338
Ford #1,251 → #938 +313
Clare #1,275 → #971 +304
Lyndon #939 → #644 +295
Ricky #919 → #654 +265

Gay and Clare 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 1941, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1941:

First recorded in 1941, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1941:

Saford 11
Garon 10
Gerlad 10
Mcelroy 7
Lindal 7
Rell 7
Timm 7
Ronn 7
Coby 7
Milous 6

Rell 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.