Humanverse

Baby names of 1913

Mary and John topped the lists in 1913, out of 1,137,112 births recorded across 6,264 different names. That is 15.1% more than the 1912 files hold. About 12 of them are alive today.

← 1912 All years 1914 →

Girls

#NameBirths
1Mary36,642
2Helen18,888
3Dorothy14,674
4Margaret14,486
5Ruth12,609
6Mildred9,921
7Anna9,687
8Elizabeth9,505
9Frances7,694
10Marie7,353
11Alice6,934
12Evelyn6,683
13Florence6,279
14Rose6,171
15Virginia6,036
16Lillian6,015
17Louise5,577
18Edna5,558
19Gladys5,428
20Ethel5,369
21Irene5,335
22Catherine5,302
23Ruby4,913
24Josephine4,822
25Grace4,669

All 200 girls’ names of 1913 (3,707 recorded)

Boys

#NameBirths
1John29,329
2William23,538
3James20,832
4Robert15,684
5Joseph14,471
6George13,874
7Charles13,191
8Edward9,474
9Frank9,237
10Thomas7,096
11Walter6,890
12Henry6,391
13Harold6,157
14Paul5,966
15Harry5,458
16Albert5,449
17Arthur5,422
18Raymond5,310
19Richard5,107
20Louis4,258
21Clarence4,046
22Ralph3,963
23Carl3,935
24Willie3,760
25Donald3,702

All 200 boys’ names of 1913 (3,261 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1912:

Lavern is here because the girls’ 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.

Biggest climbers, boys

Names that gained the most ground on 1912:

First recorded in 1913, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1913:

First recorded in 1913, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1913:

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.