Baby names of 1965

Lisa and Michael topped the lists in 1965, out of 3,625,307 births recorded across 10,843 different names. That is 6.7% fewer than the 1964 files hold. About 3.1 million of them are alive today.

← 1964 All years 1966 →

Girls

#	Name	Births
1	Lisa	60,271
2	Mary	34,270
3	Karen	32,869
4	Kimberly	28,836
5	Susan	26,321
6	Patricia	23,552
7	Donna	19,700
8	Linda	19,345
9	Cynthia	19,239
10	Angela	18,754
11	Tammy	18,013
12	Pamela	17,467
13	Deborah	17,081
14	Julie	16,987
15	Sandra	16,371
16	Elizabeth	16,321
17	Laura	16,218
18	Michelle	16,215
19	Lori	15,695
20	Jennifer	15,207
21	Christine	15,204
22	Sharon	15,129
23	Brenda	15,060
24	Teresa	14,578
25	Barbara	14,023

All 200 girls’ names of 1965 (7,535 recorded)

Boys

#	Name	Births
1	Michael	80,992
2	John	71,493
3	David	67,825
4	James	67,666
5	Robert	63,106
6	William	40,111
7	Mark	38,244
8	Richard	36,817
9	Thomas	31,595
10	Jeffrey	29,574
11	Joseph	28,630
12	Timothy	28,334
13	Kevin	28,177
14	Steven	27,977
15	Scott	25,437
16	Paul	24,919
17	Daniel	24,833
18	Christopher	24,640
19	Brian	24,552
20	Charles	23,494
21	Kenneth	22,677
22	Anthony	20,326
23	Gregory	18,205
24	Ronald	17,619
25	Eric	16,826

All 200 boys’ names of 1965 (4,425 recorded)

Biggest climbers, girls

Names that gained the most ground on 1964:

Marni #1,610 → #887 +723
Dionne #1,281 → #627 +654
Marnie #1,016 → #584 +432
Keli #1,383 → #957 +426
Gia #1,334 → #966 +368
Sarita #1,103 → #770 +333
Lizette #1,293 → #973 +320
Amie #1,211 → #904 +307

Biggest climbers, boys

Names that gained the most ground on 1964:

Trace #1,655 → #870 +785
Darran #1,729 → #1,000 +729
Daryn #1,371 → #716 +655
Darian #1,545 → #897 +648
Darryn #1,327 → #815 +512
Davin #1,350 → #1,000 +350
Chadwick #1,288 → #942 +346
Darien #1,035 → #721 +314

First recorded in 1965, girls

Names the SSA had never published before 1965:

Latrenda 90
Tatia 43
Xan 38
Endora 28
Liesl 24
Fanita 21
Petula 19
Kiesha 16
Wednesday 15
Gemini 13

Xan is here because the girls’ 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 1965, boys

Names the SSA had never published before 1965:

Shenandoah 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.