Baby names of 1920

Mary and John topped the lists in 1920, out of 2,262,645 births recorded across 9,634 different names. That is 7.2% more than the 1919 files hold. About 3,100 of them are alive today.

← 1919 All years 1921 →

Girls

#	Name	Births
1	Mary	70,983
2	Dorothy	36,643
3	Helen	35,097
4	Margaret	27,994
5	Ruth	26,102
6	Mildred	18,060
7	Virginia	17,314
8	Elizabeth	15,908
9	Frances	15,883
10	Anna	14,581
11	Betty	14,016
12	Evelyn	13,838
13	Marie	12,743
14	Doris	11,892
15	Alice	11,596
16	Florence	10,731
17	Irene	10,072
18	Lillian	10,049
19	Louise	9,179
20	Rose	9,011
21	Catherine	8,878
22	Gladys	8,819
23	Martha	8,709
24	Marjorie	8,658
25	Eleanor	8,497

All 200 girls’ names of 1920 (5,767 recorded)

Boys

#	Name	Births
1	John	56,913
2	William	50,146
3	Robert	48,679
4	James	47,908
5	Charles	28,309
6	George	26,891
7	Joseph	25,587
8	Edward	20,097
9	Frank	16,430
10	Richard	15,010
11	Thomas	14,936
12	Harold	13,678
13	Walter	13,294
14	Paul	12,570
15	Raymond	12,193
16	Donald	11,941
17	Henry	11,305
18	Arthur	10,236
19	Albert	9,997
20	Jack	9,599
21	Harry	9,406
22	Ralph	8,556
23	Kenneth	7,840
24	Howard	7,466
25	David	7,444

All 200 boys’ names of 1920 (4,989 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1919:

Denise #1,481 → #931 +550
Blossom #1,242 → #921 +321
Lilia #1,242 → #931 +311
Ena #1,270 → #968 +302
Lorayne #1,216 → #939 +277
Colleen #1,075 → #817 +258
Elvina #1,075 → #821 +254
Eugenie #1,090 → #850 +240

Biggest climbers, boys

Names that gained the most ground on 1919:

Harding #1,351 → #391 +960
Cameron #1,351 → #744 +607
Hardin #1,531 → #965 +566
Laurel #1,321 → #929 +392
Terrence #1,297 → #929 +368
Malcom #1,321 → #987 +334
Glenwood #1,122 → #826 +296
Silvio #1,063 → #785 +278

Laurel 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 1920, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1920:

Dardanella 23
Doraine 11
Monda 10
Hesta 10
Ordella 10
Madalynne 10
Glema 10
Bettyjo 10
Dalores 10
Odester 10

First recorded in 1920, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1920:

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.