Baby names of 1943

Mary and James topped the lists in 1943, out of 2,822,590 births recorded across 8,382 different names. That is 3.3% more than the 1942 files hold. About 1.3 million of them are alive today.

← 1942 All years 1944 →

Girls

#	Name	Births
1	Mary	66,174
2	Barbara	43,432
3	Patricia	39,620
4	Linda	38,439
5	Carol	31,686
6	Sandra	25,990
7	Judith	25,214
8	Sharon	24,712
9	Nancy	23,988
10	Betty	21,596
11	Carolyn	20,365
12	Shirley	17,816
13	Judy	17,383
14	Margaret	17,153
15	Karen	16,816
16	Joyce	16,485
17	Donna	14,912
18	Susan	14,888
19	Dorothy	14,793
20	Janet	13,316
21	Joan	13,232
22	Kathleen	12,153
23	Elizabeth	11,644
24	Diane	11,326
25	Virginia	10,847

All 200 girls’ names of 1943 (5,367 recorded)

Boys

#	Name	Births
1	James	80,278
2	Robert	74,892
3	John	68,929
4	William	55,904
5	Richard	46,339
6	David	37,240
7	Charles	36,632
8	Thomas	32,874
9	Ronald	29,239
10	Michael	24,745
11	Donald	24,421
12	Larry	22,978
13	Joseph	22,828
14	George	21,692
15	Kenneth	19,112
16	Gary	17,868
17	Jerry	17,730
18	Edward	17,713
19	Paul	17,253
20	Dennis	14,116
21	Frank	12,246
22	Raymond	11,391
23	Gerald	11,367
24	Roger	10,773
25	Daniel	9,168

All 200 boys’ names of 1943 (4,040 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1942:

Tana #1,559 → #681 +878
Rozanne #1,706 → #952 +754
Cheryle #1,592 → #870 +722
Tena #1,592 → #996 +596
Alexis #1,349 → #824 +525
Dennis #1,438 → #952 +486
Pennie #1,413 → #952 +461
Kerry #1,229 → #832 +397

Dennis and Kerry are here because the girls’ 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.

Biggest climbers, boys

Names that gained the most ground on 1942:

Derek #1,228 → #714 +514
Armond #1,421 → #956 +465
Les #1,214 → #846 +368
Aron #1,244 → #897 +347
Edsel #1,167 → #846 +321
Randle #1,298 → #986 +312
Lavon #1,214 → #917 +297
Terrill #1,110 → #856 +254

Lavon 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 1943, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1943:

Sharelle 28
Charyl 24
Rosalita 20
Tanna 17
Tari 12
Loni 12
Shirlyn 11
Soundra 11
Scheryl 11
Jonni 11

First recorded in 1943, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1943:

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.