Baby names of 1942

Mary and James topped the lists in 1942, out of 2,731,880 births recorded across 8,383 different names. That is 12.1% more than the 1941 files hold. About 1.2 million of them are alive today.

← 1941 All years 1943 →

Girls

#	Name	Births
1	Mary	63,256
2	Barbara	44,739
3	Patricia	39,465
4	Linda	31,613
5	Carol	30,272
6	Sandra	24,994
7	Judith	24,792
8	Nancy	23,327
9	Betty	21,659
10	Carolyn	19,978
11	Sharon	19,648
12	Shirley	17,750
13	Joyce	16,728
14	Margaret	16,549
15	Judy	15,667
16	Karen	15,387
17	Dorothy	15,037
18	Joan	14,514
19	Janet	13,065
20	Donna	12,987
21	Susan	12,015
22	Elizabeth	11,186
23	Virginia	10,803
24	Kathleen	10,696
25	Janice	10,286

All 200 girls’ names of 1942 (5,378 recorded)

Boys

#	Name	Births
1	James	77,182
2	Robert	71,845
3	John	66,043
4	William	54,890
5	Richard	43,593
6	David	35,905
7	Charles	35,854
8	Thomas	31,100
9	Ronald	27,138
10	Donald	23,955
11	Joseph	22,429
12	Larry	22,099
13	Michael	21,728
14	George	21,275
15	Kenneth	18,210
16	Jerry	17,488
17	Edward	17,470
18	Gary	17,068
19	Paul	16,492
20	Dennis	13,281
21	Frank	12,248
22	Gerald	11,484
23	Douglas	11,233
24	Raymond	11,116
25	Roger	9,174

All 200 boys’ names of 1942 (4,044 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1941:

Michal #4,420 → #853 +3,567
Merrily #2,397 → #512 +1,885
Merrilee #1,954 → #873 +1,081
Jerrilyn #1,610 → #827 +783
Candace #1,418 → #658 +760
Pauletta #1,501 → #853 +648
Cassandra #1,151 → #545 +606
Melody #1,020 → #522 +498

Biggest climbers, boys

Names that gained the most ground on 1941:

Macarthur #3,505 → #512 +2,993
Mcarthur #1,903 → #357 +1,546
Collin #1,588 → #933 +655
Delmas #1,254 → #740 +514
Colin #713 → #323 +390
Mac #683 → #308 +375
Clearence #1,333 → #991 +342
Casey #1,209 → #876 +333

First recorded in 1942, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1942:

Rise 15
Gerilyn 15
Dwala 15
Risa 12
Sharrel 12
Nichole 11
Jackalyn 10
Georgieann 9
Fiona 9
Miki 9

First recorded in 1942, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1942:

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.