Baby names of 1946

Mary and James topped the lists in 1946, out of 3,195,328 births recorded across 8,683 different names. That is 20.4% more than the 1945 files hold. About 1.8 million of them are alive today.

← 1945 All years 1947 →

Girls

#	Name	Births
1	Mary	67,471
2	Linda	52,710
3	Patricia	46,297
4	Barbara	45,126
5	Carol	34,284
6	Sandra	31,692
7	Nancy	28,345
8	Susan	28,267
9	Sharon	27,824
10	Judith	22,310
11	Judy	20,477
12	Carolyn	19,902
13	Donna	19,770
14	Betty	19,711
15	Karen	19,647
16	Kathleen	18,760
17	Margaret	18,136
18	Shirley	17,870
19	Diane	15,835
20	Joyce	15,209
21	Janet	14,142
22	Janice	14,039
23	Dorothy	12,797
24	Brenda	12,690
25	Elizabeth	11,753

All 200 girls’ names of 1946 (5,686 recorded)

Boys

#	Name	Births
1	James	87,438
2	Robert	84,136
3	John	79,267
4	William	60,034
5	Richard	58,870
6	David	46,444
7	Michael	41,194
8	Thomas	38,877
9	Charles	38,215
10	Ronald	31,858
11	Larry	28,447
12	Gary	26,931
13	Donald	26,273
14	Joseph	24,284
15	Kenneth	22,042
16	George	21,575
17	Dennis	21,447
18	Paul	21,063
19	Edward	18,585
20	Jerry	17,567
21	Daniel	12,867
22	Frank	12,667
23	Roger	12,411
24	Stephen	11,832
25	Raymond	11,289

All 200 boys’ names of 1946 (4,018 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1945:

Jacalyn #2,742 → #912 +1,830
Kimberly #1,621 → #707 +914
Suzette #1,032 → #417 +615
Randi #1,356 → #818 +538
Dayle #1,356 → #828 +528
Gilda #914 → #442 +472
Kristi #1,187 → #776 +411
Sherilyn #1,114 → #743 +371

Biggest climbers, boys

Names that gained the most ground on 1945:

Zachary #1,536 → #952 +584
Patric #1,494 → #980 +514
Kris #1,296 → #911 +385
Rich #1,296 → #911 +385
Furman #1,270 → #890 +380
Kit #1,249 → #878 +371
Linton #1,349 → #980 +369
Lindell #1,204 → #848 +356

First recorded in 1946, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1946:

Suzzette 17
Krystal 16
Trish 13
Darlia 13
Kandis 13
Lesli 13
Jami 12
Marni 11
Jerrolyn 11
Tereasa 11

First recorded in 1946, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1946:

Tyronne 8
Sung 8
Kenric 7
Aric 7
Alfreddie 7
Harmie 7
Wain 6
Jamal 6
Dalis 6
Slade 6

Dalis 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.