Baby names of 1955
Mary and Michael topped the lists in 1955, out of 4,015,166 births recorded across 10,013 different names. That is 0.9% more than the 1954 files hold. About 3 million of them are alive today.
Girls
| # | Name | Births |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mary | 63,174 |
| 2 | Deborah | 52,318 |
| 3 | Linda | 51,300 |
| 4 | Debra | 50,563 |
| 5 | Susan | 47,418 |
| 6 | Patricia | 46,226 |
| 7 | Barbara | 33,617 |
| 8 | Karen | 33,217 |
| 9 | Nancy | 30,023 |
| 10 | Donna | 27,940 |
| 11 | Cynthia | 27,178 |
| 12 | Pamela | 26,690 |
| 13 | Sandra | 25,112 |
| 14 | Diane | 23,290 |
| 15 | Carol | 22,046 |
| 16 | Sharon | 22,044 |
| 17 | Kathleen | 22,014 |
| 18 | Brenda | 19,114 |
| 19 | Cheryl | 19,111 |
| 20 | Janet | 17,920 |
| 21 | Elizabeth | 16,696 |
| 22 | Kathy | 15,324 |
| 23 | Denise | 14,560 |
| 24 | Margaret | 14,440 |
| 25 | Janice | 13,178 |
All 200 girls’ names of 1955 (6,732 recorded)
Boys
| # | Name | Births |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Michael | 88,355 |
| 2 | David | 86,306 |
| 3 | James | 84,186 |
| 4 | Robert | 83,758 |
| 5 | John | 80,128 |
| 6 | William | 59,990 |
| 7 | Richard | 53,566 |
| 8 | Thomas | 45,855 |
| 9 | Mark | 42,255 |
| 10 | Steven | 37,847 |
| 11 | Charles | 35,365 |
| 12 | Gary | 34,433 |
| 13 | Joseph | 31,589 |
| 14 | Donald | 27,726 |
| 15 | Kenneth | 26,743 |
| 16 | Paul | 26,701 |
| 17 | Daniel | 26,460 |
| 18 | Ronald | 26,172 |
| 19 | Larry | 22,819 |
| 20 | Jeffrey | 22,533 |
| 21 | Stephen | 22,155 |
| 22 | Timothy | 20,738 |
| 23 | Dennis | 20,436 |
| 24 | Gregory | 19,815 |
| 25 | Edward | 19,280 |
All 200 boys’ names of 1955 (4,400 recorded)
Biggest climbers, girls
Names that gained the most ground on 1954:
Biggest climbers, boys
Names that gained the most ground on 1954:
First recorded in 1955, girls
Names the SSA had never published before 1955:
First recorded in 1955, boys
Names the SSA had never published before 1955:
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.