Baby names of 1915

Mary and John topped the lists in 1915, out of 1,832,427 births recorded across 8,412 different names. That is 29.4% more than the 1914 files hold. About 100 of them are alive today.

← 1914 All years 1916 →

Girls

#	Name	Births
1	Mary	58,187
2	Helen	30,866
3	Dorothy	25,154
4	Margaret	23,054
5	Ruth	21,878
6	Mildred	15,254
7	Anna	15,119
8	Elizabeth	14,103
9	Frances	12,786
10	Evelyn	11,595
11	Marie	11,363
12	Virginia	10,952
13	Alice	10,525
14	Florence	10,105
15	Lillian	9,546
16	Rose	9,375
17	Irene	8,323
18	Louise	8,313
19	Catherine	8,181
20	Edna	8,144
21	Gladys	7,857
22	Josephine	7,606
23	Ethel	7,379
24	Ruby	7,237
25	Martha	7,216

All 200 girls’ names of 1915 (4,967 recorded)

Boys

#	Name	Births
1	John	47,576
2	William	38,563
3	James	33,773
4	Robert	28,737
5	Joseph	23,051
6	George	22,307
7	Charles	21,960
8	Edward	15,889
9	Frank	15,006
10	Thomas	11,490
11	Walter	11,255
12	Harold	10,444
13	Paul	10,328
14	Henry	10,138
15	Richard	9,143
16	Raymond	8,981
17	Albert	8,825
18	Arthur	8,564
19	Harry	8,470
20	Donald	7,116
21	Ralph	6,816
22	Carl	6,613
23	Louis	6,518
24	Clarence	6,267
25	Howard	6,103

All 200 boys’ names of 1915 (4,390 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1914:

Gerda #1,444 → #944 +500
Theda #1,034 → #583 +451
Dominga #1,385 → #944 +441
Vernon #1,344 → #990 +354
Loyce #1,147 → #839 +308
Illa #1,303 → #1,000 +303
Willia #1,147 → #865 +282
Oneta #1,147 → #874 +273

Vernon 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 1914:

Eston #1,687 → #996 +691
Estill #1,545 → #980 +565
Garth #1,260 → #715 +545
Hiroshi #1,342 → #868 +474
Domingo #1,101 → #662 +439
Emmit #1,188 → #832 +356
Deward #1,300 → #980 +320
Arvo #1,260 → #952 +308

First recorded in 1915, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1915:

Wanza 33
Laberta 14
Czeslawa 13
Hanako 13
Lenor 12
Ernesta 12
Essiemae 12
Arcie 11
Ardythe 11
Nobuko 11

First recorded in 1915, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1915:

Trevor 17
Secundino 17
Ichiro 16
Montague 14
Augusto 14
Hassell 14
Waldron 13
Faris 13
Shermon 13
Nester 12

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.