Baby names of 1962
Lisa and Michael topped the lists in 1962, out of 4,035,375 births recorded across 10,991 different names. That is 2.6% fewer than the 1961 files hold. About 3.3 million of them are alive today.
Girls
| # | Name | Births |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lisa | 46,069 |
| 2 | Mary | 43,502 |
| 3 | Susan | 35,752 |
| 4 | Karen | 35,184 |
| 5 | Linda | 31,461 |
| 6 | Patricia | 26,532 |
| 7 | Donna | 25,719 |
| 8 | Cynthia | 24,025 |
| 9 | Deborah | 22,889 |
| 10 | Sandra | 22,420 |
| 11 | Lori | 22,395 |
| 12 | Brenda | 21,274 |
| 13 | Pamela | 21,270 |
| 14 | Barbara | 20,641 |
| 15 | Debra | 20,593 |
| 16 | Kimberly | 20,363 |
| 17 | Sharon | 19,630 |
| 18 | Teresa | 18,517 |
| 19 | Nancy | 18,027 |
| 20 | Elizabeth | 17,806 |
| 21 | Laura | 17,490 |
| 22 | Julie | 17,090 |
| 23 | Tammy | 16,743 |
| 24 | Cheryl | 16,587 |
| 25 | Robin | 15,128 |
All 200 girls’ names of 1962 (7,584 recorded)
Boys
| # | Name | Births |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Michael | 85,059 |
| 2 | David | 81,337 |
| 3 | John | 78,427 |
| 4 | James | 72,555 |
| 5 | Robert | 70,199 |
| 6 | Mark | 53,520 |
| 7 | William | 44,853 |
| 8 | Richard | 39,422 |
| 9 | Thomas | 36,529 |
| 10 | Jeffrey | 33,537 |
| 11 | Scott | 30,703 |
| 12 | Steven | 30,688 |
| 13 | Joseph | 30,090 |
| 14 | Kevin | 28,325 |
| 15 | Charles | 27,590 |
| 16 | Timothy | 27,111 |
| 17 | Daniel | 25,543 |
| 18 | Kenneth | 25,241 |
| 19 | Paul | 23,802 |
| 20 | Brian | 23,221 |
| 21 | Gregory | 21,976 |
| 22 | Gary | 20,884 |
| 23 | Donald | 20,425 |
| 24 | Anthony | 20,103 |
| 25 | Ronald | 19,963 |
All 200 boys’ names of 1962 (4,631 recorded)
Biggest climbers, girls
Names that gained the most ground on 1961:
Biggest climbers, boys
Names that gained the most ground on 1961:
First recorded in 1962, girls
Names the SSA had never published before 1962:
First recorded in 1962, boys
Names the SSA had never published before 1962:
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.