Baby names of 1957

Mary and Michael topped the lists in 1957, out of 4,202,087 births recorded across 10,384 different names. That is 1.9% more than the 1956 files hold. About 3.2 million of them are alive today.

← 1956 All years 1958 →

Girls

#	Name	Births
1	Mary	61,102
2	Susan	45,954
3	Linda	44,517
4	Debra	42,728
5	Karen	40,591
6	Deborah	40,096
7	Cynthia	39,340
8	Patricia	39,283
9	Barbara	29,692
10	Donna	28,042
11	Nancy	27,515
12	Pamela	25,015
13	Brenda	24,339
14	Sharon	24,298
15	Sandra	22,765
16	Cheryl	22,643
17	Diane	22,090
18	Carol	21,898
19	Cindy	20,272
20	Kathy	20,237
21	Kathleen	19,742
22	Elizabeth	17,492
23	Janet	15,753
24	Teresa	15,687
25	Denise	15,145

All 200 girls’ names of 1957 (7,015 recorded)

Boys

#	Name	Births
1	Michael	92,781
2	James	84,337
3	David	82,403
4	Robert	81,765
5	John	79,033
6	William	56,852
7	Mark	52,841
8	Richard	52,446
9	Thomas	44,625
10	Steven	36,842
11	Charles	34,283
12	Joseph	31,851
13	Gary	29,530
14	Kenneth	28,064
15	Donald	27,910
16	Daniel	27,337
17	Ronald	27,209
18	Paul	27,012
19	Timothy	24,733
20	Kevin	24,285
21	Jeffrey	23,982
22	Larry	21,941
23	Gregory	21,472
24	Stephen	19,726
25	Edward	18,711

All 200 boys’ names of 1957 (4,552 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1956:

Tammi #3,696 → #752 +2,944
Tamela #2,151 → #841 +1,310
Tammie #1,662 → #364 +1,298
Tia #1,968 → #975 +993
Tamera #1,287 → #611 +676
Anastasia #1,617 → #975 +642
Tami #879 → #315 +564
Deb #1,298 → #760 +538

Biggest climbers, boys

Names that gained the most ground on 1956:

Dion #1,642 → #928 +714
Wes #1,317 → #913 +404
Antoine #1,232 → #861 +371
Domenick #1,335 → #995 +340
Mitch #868 → #539 +329
Cheyenne #1,218 → #897 +321
Bret #831 → #556 +275
Sal #1,056 → #789 +267

Cheyenne 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 1957, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1957:

Tierney 46
Sindee 33
Marsheila 32
Tammera 26
Tamy 22
Tammye 18
Gia 18
Marshelia 18
Theonita 17
Tammra 17

First recorded in 1957, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1957:

Maverick 33
Yul 31
Laszlo 13
Kaseem 11
Lamark 10
Darick 10
Tabb 9
Seamus 9
Ingo 8
Jeffray 8

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.