Humanverse

Baby names of 1921

Mary and John topped the lists in 1921, out of 2,334,507 births recorded across 9,728 different names. That is 3.2% more than the 1920 files hold. About 5,500 of them are alive today.

← 1920 All years 1922 →

Girls

#NameBirths
1Mary73,984
2Dorothy39,087
3Helen34,822
4Margaret28,468
5Ruth25,783
6Virginia19,032
7Mildred17,880
8Betty17,638
9Frances15,993
10Elizabeth15,800
11Anna14,476
12Evelyn14,278
13Doris13,152
14Marie12,501
15Alice11,955
16Marjorie11,209
17Florence10,720
18Irene10,624
19Lillian9,770
20Rose9,352
21Martha9,264
22Louise9,180
23Catherine8,887
24Gladys8,814
25Jean8,592

All 200 girls’ names of 1921 (5,871 recorded)

Boys

#NameBirths
1John58,216
2Robert52,779
3William51,862
4James49,750
5Charles29,242
6George27,476
7Joseph26,182
8Edward20,817
9Frank16,705
10Richard16,376
11Thomas15,308
12Harold13,811
13Donald13,776
14Paul13,169
15Walter13,004
16Raymond12,645
17Henry11,411
18Jack10,757
19Arthur10,527
20Albert10,158
21Harry9,731
22Kenneth8,959
23Ralph8,860
24Warren7,798
25David7,765

All 200 boys’ names of 1921 (4,985 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1920:

Toby and Arlie 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 1920:

First recorded in 1921, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1921:

First recorded in 1921, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1921:

Henny 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.

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.