Baby names of 1950

Linda and James topped the lists in 1950, out of 3,503,316 births recorded across 9,281 different names. That is 0.5% more than the 1949 files hold. About 2.3 million of them are alive today.

← 1949 All years 1951 →

Girls

#	Name	Births
1	Linda	80,433
2	Mary	65,481
3	Patricia	47,944
4	Barbara	41,556
5	Susan	38,017
6	Nancy	29,617
7	Deborah	29,063
8	Sandra	28,896
9	Carol	26,163
10	Kathleen	25,706
11	Sharon	24,612
12	Karen	24,132
13	Donna	21,629
14	Brenda	20,799
15	Margaret	18,110
16	Diane	17,636
17	Pamela	16,202
18	Janet	16,193
19	Shirley	15,891
20	Carolyn	15,588
21	Judith	15,352
22	Janice	15,012
23	Cynthia	14,447
24	Elizabeth	14,334
25	Judy	14,207

All 200 girls’ names of 1950 (6,109 recorded)

Boys

#	Name	Births
1	James	86,228
2	Robert	83,553
3	John	79,412
4	Michael	65,136
5	David	60,729
6	William	60,680
7	Richard	51,003
8	Thomas	45,596
9	Charles	39,095
10	Gary	33,737
11	Larry	31,480
12	Ronald	29,908
13	Joseph	27,022
14	Donald	26,999
15	Kenneth	23,813
16	Steven	23,250
17	Dennis	22,862
18	Paul	21,742
19	Stephen	20,511
20	George	20,183
21	Daniel	19,189
22	Edward	18,714
23	Mark	16,604
24	Jerry	15,261
25	Gregory	13,311

All 200 boys’ names of 1950 (4,196 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1949:

Mindy #2,013 → #771 +1,242
Geralyn #1,627 → #978 +649
Kyle #1,512 → #876 +636
Debrah #1,109 → #693 +416
Debbra #1,353 → #948 +405
Shawn #1,154 → #803 +351
Mara #1,251 → #916 +335
Roxann #973 → #652 +321

Kyle and Shawn 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 1949:

Ezzard #1,616 → #872 +744
Kelvin #1,085 → #575 +510
Nancy #1,297 → #850 +447
Samual #1,380 → #960 +420
Shaun #1,275 → #899 +376
Layne #1,227 → #960 +267
Shelly #1,185 → #926 +259
Tod #1,144 → #885 +259

Nancy and Shelly 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 1950, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1950:

First recorded in 1950, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1950:

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.