Baby names of 1916

Mary and John topped the lists in 1916, out of 1,934,414 births recorded across 8,692 different names. That is 5.6% more than the 1915 files hold. About 220 of them are alive today.

← 1915 All years 1917 →

Girls

#	Name	Births
1	Mary	61,438
2	Helen	32,661
3	Dorothy	27,418
4	Margaret	24,953
5	Ruth	23,189
6	Mildred	15,633
7	Anna	15,228
8	Elizabeth	14,940
9	Frances	13,746
10	Virginia	12,487
11	Evelyn	11,889
12	Marie	11,682
13	Alice	10,719
14	Florence	10,412
15	Rose	9,605
16	Lillian	9,592
17	Irene	9,035
18	Louise	8,630
19	Edna	8,625
20	Catherine	8,469
21	Josephine	8,127
22	Gladys	8,019
23	Ruby	7,686
24	Martha	7,610
25	Ethel	7,601

All 200 girls’ names of 1916 (5,161 recorded)

Boys

#	Name	Births
1	John	50,043
2	William	40,418
3	James	35,569
4	Robert	31,741
5	Joseph	23,883
6	Charles	23,612
7	George	23,381
8	Edward	17,005
9	Frank	15,291
10	Thomas	11,998
11	Walter	11,760
12	Paul	10,790
13	Harold	10,698
14	Henry	10,656
15	Richard	10,134
16	Raymond	9,565
17	Albert	9,044
18	Arthur	8,921
19	Harry	8,476
20	Donald	7,736
21	Ralph	7,085
22	Louis	6,817
23	Carl	6,785
24	Clarence	6,304
25	Howard	6,171

All 200 boys’ names of 1916 (4,535 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1915:

Trinidad #1,317 → #750 +567
Coral #1,367 → #979 +388
Coletta #1,317 → #940 +377
Clifford #1,285 → #915 +370
Maida #1,231 → #904 +327
Henretta #1,285 → #964 +321
Orene #1,285 → #993 +292
Isobel #1,094 → #817 +277

Trinidad and Clifford 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 1915:

Tatsuo #3,392 → #824 +2,568
Hughes #1,878 → #790 +1,088
Angel #1,181 → #771 +410
Trinidad #1,181 → #803 +378
Rolla #1,306 → #952 +354
Vernal #1,241 → #892 +349
Wyman #1,342 → #998 +344
Manning #1,306 → #964 +342

First recorded in 1916, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1916:

First recorded in 1916, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1916:

Verdun 14
Warnie 12
Tatsumi 11
Cono 11
Duel 11
Derwin 10
Osburn 10
Coston 10
Hezikiah 10
Leandrew 10

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.