Humanverse

Baby names of 1963

Lisa and Michael topped the lists in 1963, out of 3,958,585 births recorded across 11,101 different names. That is 1.9% fewer than the 1962 files hold. About 3.3 million of them are alive today.

← 1962 All years 1964 →

Girls

#NameBirths
1Lisa56,047
2Mary41,546
3Susan33,991
4Karen32,492
5Linda27,727
6Donna25,405
7Patricia25,374
8Lori23,899
9Sandra21,621
10Cynthia21,589
11Kimberly21,224
12Tammy21,199
13Deborah21,053
14Pamela20,593
15Brenda19,611
16Laura18,514
17Barbara18,295
18Teresa17,965
19Sharon17,800
20Elizabeth17,598
21Debra17,335
22Julie16,304
23Nancy16,266
24Cheryl15,047
25Robin14,435

All 200 girls’ names of 1963 (7,661 recorded)

Boys

#NameBirths
1Michael83,771
2John78,636
3David78,444
4James71,294
5Robert70,007
6Mark49,342
7William44,453
8Richard40,772
9Thomas35,490
10Jeffrey31,701
11Kevin30,613
12Scott30,396
13Joseph30,077
14Steven29,328
15Timothy27,187
16Charles26,762
17Paul26,672
18Kenneth25,235
19Daniel24,815
20Brian24,133
21Gregory21,420
22Anthony20,250
23Ronald19,780
24Gary18,929
25Donald18,896

All 200 boys’ names of 1963 (4,621 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1962:

Biggest climbers, boys

Names that gained the most ground on 1962:

Jaimie, Pamela and Laura are here because the boys’ 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.

First recorded in 1963, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1963:

First recorded in 1963, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1963:

Stevey 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.