Top Baby Names in Kentucky, 1940s — Most Popular Boys & Girls Names

What the Data Says About the 1940s in Kentucky

During the 1940s (1940–1949), the Social Security Administration recorded 398,236 births across the top 50 boy and top 50 girl names in Kentucky. The decade's leading boy name was James with 23,296 births, while Mary was the top girl name with 16,761 births. The top 50 boys in this decade collectively accounted for 210,659 births versus 187,577 for the top 50 girls — a common SSA pattern in which the boy-name pool is more concentrated among fewer high-frequency choices. These totals represent only names appearing five or more times per year in Kentucky; rarer names fall below the SSA's privacy-disclosure threshold and are excluded.

The 1940s sits within a specific cultural window of U.S. naming history. Pre-1950 decades like the 1940s were characterized by strong traditional and biblical naming conventions, with a small cluster of dominant names (John, William, Mary, Elizabeth) capturing a disproportionate share of births. James and Mary leading Kentucky during this window reflects how regional preferences interact with broader national trends.

Decade totals are computed by summing SSA state-year records for Kentucky across all ten years of the 1940s. Because the SSA suppresses any name with fewer than five annual occurrences in a state, the true number of unique names given in Kentucky during this decade is larger than what this page lists. The dataset also treats every spelling as a separate name — for example, Kayla and Kaylah are tracked independently — so combined-spelling totals would shift the rankings somewhat. This page is provided for informational and research purposes and does not constitute naming, legal, or genealogical advice.