Generation hub

Baby Boomer baby names

The names recorded most often for baby boomer births, summed from SSA records for 1946–1964: Mary led the girls and James led the boys — but the full roster below tells the real story of the generation's classrooms.

The biggest classrooms American naming ever filled

The Baby Boomer window sits inside the most concentrated era of American naming on record. Birth totals were at their peak, and the same names repeated across classrooms, neighborhoods, and states to a degree no later generation matched. The tables below rank the names recorded most often between 1946 and 1964 — the era of James, Robert, Mary, and Linda — and the numbers come straight from the SSA's annual files, summed over exactly those years.

Popularity measures size. Signature names measure identity: the names below the tables whose recorded histories are most tightly packed inside these nineteen years are the ones that now read as unmistakably Boomer — strong, familiar, and shared across an entire generation of school rosters.

Girls' popularity champion
Mary 1,125,425 births
Boys' popularity champion
James 1,571,095 births
Window
1946–1964
Total recorded births
73,365,011
Girls / boys
35,816,633 / 37,548,378
Coverage
Complete window

1946–1964 (complete)

Signature names of the generation

These names have the largest share of their recorded lifetime inside 1946–1964 (among the top-25 names of their sex, minimum 5,000 lifetime births). Popularity measures size; this measures how tightly a name's history belongs to this generation.

Girls

  • Debra 81.4% of its lifetime in the window
  • Deborah 78.3% of its lifetime in the window
  • Kathy 76.2% of its lifetime in the window

Boys

  • Gary 60.4% of its lifetime in the window
  • Dennis 56.3% of its lifetime in the window
  • Larry 54.5% of its lifetime in the window

How the Silent Generation gave way

How the silent generation window (1928–1945) gave way: Mary held the girls' lead in both windows, and the boys' champion turned over, from Robert to James. The tables below show which names carried that change.

The most popular baby boomer names

Ranked by recorded SSA births inside 1946–1964. “Share of lifetime” compares each name's births in the window with its recorded total through 2025 — the higher the share, the more the name belongs to this generation.

Most popular baby boomer girls' names, 1946–1964
Rank Name Births in window Lifetime births Share of lifetime
1 Mary 1,125,425 4,141,481 27.2%
2 Linda 1,059,731 1,455,143 72.8%
3 Patricia 788,719 1,573,623 50.1%
4 Susan 749,688 1,123,481 66.7%
5 Barbara 631,947 1,436,695 44.0%
6 Karen 587,294 987,989 59.4%
7 Deborah 581,919 742,820 78.3%
8 Nancy 497,871 1,004,448 49.6%
9 Donna 495,463 831,641 59.6%
10 Sandra 491,783 875,531 56.2%
11 Debra 448,110 550,695 81.4%
12 Sharon 435,772 723,024 60.3%
13 Cynthia 423,032 711,453 59.5%
14 Carol 419,510 816,928 51.4%
15 Pamela 394,045 595,076 66.2%
16 Kathleen 387,257 713,645 54.3%
17 Brenda 381,739 608,478 62.7%
18 Diane 353,087 518,651 68.1%
19 Lisa 330,437 967,229 34.2%
20 Elizabeth 308,190 1,688,757 18.2%
21 Cheryl 305,166 439,539 69.4%
22 Janet 286,087 556,776 51.4%
23 Margaret 276,545 1,264,774 21.9%
24 Kathy 254,617 334,131 76.2%
25 Carolyn 246,532 556,777 44.3%
Most popular baby boomer boys' names, 1946–1964
Rank Name Births in window Lifetime births Share of lifetime
1 James 1,571,095 5,250,638 29.9%
2 Robert 1,531,057 4,849,730 31.6%
3 John 1,525,175 5,182,633 29.4%
4 Michael 1,464,358 4,426,753 33.1%
5 David 1,396,018 3,676,654 38.0%
6 William 1,072,678 4,199,696 25.5%
7 Richard 959,766 2,577,552 37.2%
8 Thomas 810,401 2,358,576 34.4%
9 Mark 684,331 1,362,176 50.2%
10 Charles 658,032 2,434,659 27.0%
11 Joseph 554,967 2,669,490 20.8%
12 Steven 547,850 1,293,124 42.4%
13 Gary 545,111 902,152 60.4%
14 Ronald 504,068 1,082,247 46.6%
15 Kenneth 485,713 1,283,974 37.8%
16 Donald 483,189 1,414,824 34.2%
17 Paul 468,532 1,398,293 33.5%
18 Larry 439,970 807,588 54.5%
19 Daniel 433,082 1,982,812 21.8%
20 Timothy 368,751 1,084,192 34.0%
21 Jeffrey 364,210 979,601 37.2%
22 Stephen 349,897 864,739 40.5%
23 Dennis 349,498 621,000 56.3%
24 Edward 344,526 1,303,594 26.4%
25 George 333,878 1,487,297 22.4%

Explore the decades behind the generation

The window crosses calendar decades, and each decade hub has its own profile — champions, ownership scores, classrooms, spelling families. Jump into the ones that make up this generation:

Methodology and source

Every figure on this page is computed from U.S. Social Security Administration national birth records for exactly 1946–1964, summed from the same annual data the decade hubs are built from. Nothing is estimated and nothing is recalculated in your browser.

The Baby Boomer generation is commonly dated 1946–1964 (Pew Research Center's convention). The SSA's annual files cover every year in the window, so every figure on this page is summed from exactly those nineteen calendar years.

The source suppresses name-and-sex counts below 5 per year, so very rare names are under-counted everywhere on this page. Records reflect sex as recorded at birth, in two categories; they are not a record of gender identity. “Lifetime” births mean recorded births from 1880 through 2025, the SSA file's own span.

About the data · SSA source

Window
1946–1964; data through 2025
Completeness
Complete window
Source
SSA national birth records (annual files)