The year was 1964. The Beatles played Ed Sullivan in February and a generation of parents discovered British pop. The Civil Rights Act passed in July. President Kennedy had been dead seven months; Lyndon Johnson would win the November election in a landslide. And the baby boom was at its absolute apex — more than 4 million babies were born. The naming data from that year is striking on both sides: the boys' list is a fortress of durability, and the girls' list is almost entirely collapsed sixty years later.
Here's what the SSA data shows for 1964.
Top 15 Boy Names, 1964
| Rank | Name | 1964 babies | 2024 rank | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Michael | 82,619 | #18 | Held the #1 spot for most of the 1950s–90s; still inside top 20 |
| 2 | John | 82,519 | #21 | Within 100 births of Michael — the closest any name has ever come |
| 3 | David | 75,036 | #31 | The most stable name in the dataset — barely moved in sixty years |
| 4 | James | 73,021 | #5 | Back in the top 5 in 2024 |
| 5 | Robert | 69,983 | #90 | Sliding from its mid-century peak |
| 6 | Mark | 45,264 | #246 | Baby boom peak; declining without revival |
| 7 | William | 44,223 | #10 | Back in the top 10 |
| 8 | Richard | 40,100 | #232 | Peaked in this era; no sign of returning |
| 9 | Thomas | 34,451 | #39 | Quietly steady |
| 10 | Jeffrey | 30,729 | #520 | The most dated name in this top 10 |
| 11 | Joseph | 30,563 | #32 | Biblical anchor — solid across sixty years |
| 12 | Steven | 29,709 | #269 | Peaked in the 1960s; declining |
| 13 | Kevin | 29,355 | #196 | Irish; had a long run but fading fast |
| 14 | Scott | 28,504 | #565 | Entirely a boomer and Gen X name |
| 15 | Timothy | 28,097 | #208 | Mid-chart; not returning |
Top 15 Girl Names, 1964
| Rank | Name | 1964 babies | 2024 rank | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lisa | 54,271 | #985 | One of the most dramatic rises and collapses in naming history |
| 2 | Mary | 40,987 | #132 | Still on the board after 40 years at or near #1 |
| 3 | Susan | 31,515 | #1,136 | Virtually extinct among under-50s |
| 4 | Karen | 30,247 | #1,263 | The cultural shift on "Karen" accelerated the statistical one |
| 5 | Patricia | 26,090 | #1,302 | Near-extinct |
| 6 | Kimberly | 24,131 | #246 | The strongest survivor from the 1964 girls' top 10 |
| 7 | Donna | 23,807 | #1,941 | Almost entirely out of use |
| 8 | Linda | 23,632 | #835 | Past its peak (it was #1 in 1947–52) but still registering |
| 9 | Cynthia | 20,319 | #826 | Declining but not quite gone |
| 10 | Tammy | 20,045 | #4,862 | The most vanished name on this list |
| 11 | Pamela | 19,824 | #2,161 | Literary origin (Richardson's 1740 novel); didn't help |
| 12 | Deborah | 19,305 | #852 | Biblical — holding on slightly better than secular peers |
| 13 | Sandra | 19,249 | #1,045 | Near-extinct |
| 14 | Laura | 18,967 | #359 | The only true mid-chart holdout in the top 15 |
| 15 | Lori | 18,620 | #1,524 | Peaked here; not returning |
What stands out
Michael and John, side by side. Michael had 82,619 births in 1964; John had 82,519. That's a gap of exactly 100 babies out of 4 million. No two names have ever been this close at the top of the chart. Michael held the #1 spot for boys for most of the period from 1954 to 1998 — but 1964 is the year it almost wasn't.
The boys' list has aged remarkably well. Nine of the top 15 boys' names from 1964 are still inside the top 250 today. James is back at #5. William is at #10. David, Joseph, and Thomas are all inside the top 40. The bedrock of the 1964 boys' chart is the same bedrock that's been there since 1914 — biblical names and English classics that have survived every trend.
Jeffrey, Scott, and Kevin are the exceptions. These three are the names that feel most purely of their era. Jeffrey is at #520; Scott at #565; Kevin at #196 (and falling fast). They don't have the classical roots to survive a generation of dormancy, and no cultural wave has arrived to push them back.
Lisa's rise and fall. Lisa was #1 in 1964 with 54,271 babies — and is now at #985. The arc is one of the steepest in the dataset. In the 1960s, Lisa spread from Italian-American communities to the broader US mainstream; by the mid-1970s it was everywhere; by the 1990s it was fading; today it's virtually a sealed time capsule of a name. "Lisa" now almost always means someone born between 1960 and 1975.
The girls' list is a graveyard. Only Kimberly (#246) and Laura (#359) are anywhere near the mid-chart. Mary (#132) persists on its biblical longevity alone. Susan, Karen, Patricia, Donna, Tammy, Pamela, Sandra, Lori — all of them are at or above #835. This is not a story of names cycling back; these are names that are functionally done.
Tammy at #4,862. The most extreme case: Tammy ranked #10 nationally in 1964 and is now at #4,862. That's rarer than almost any name you've never heard of. The name is so completely era-coded — Tammy Wynette's 1968 hit "Stand by Your Man" is the cultural peak — that no revival path is visible.
The baby boom in numbers. The 1964 top 15 boys' names alone account for approximately 754,000 births. In 2024, the top 15 boys' names account for fewer than 150,000 births from a much larger population. The concentration of the baby boom era is staggering — parents in 1964 were choosing from a much smaller pool of names, and choosing the same ones.
See the full rankings for 1964 or explore names like Lisa, Michael, and Kimberly in depth.
Data: U.S. Social Security Administration 1964 and 2024 releases.