1950s Name Generator

How the 1950s Name Generator works

How the 1950s name generator works

The 1950s were the peak of a few names to a degree no decade before or since has matched. In the United States one girl in every twenty born in 1950 was Linda, and Mary, Patricia, Barbara, Carol, Sandra, Sharon, Judith, Karen, Donna, Cynthia, Deborah, Nancy and Susan covered nearly half of all girls; a boy was James, Robert, John, Michael, David or William, and the names that identify a 1950s boy rather than any boy are the next tier, Gary, Larry, Dennis, Ronald, Donald, Wayne, Roger, Terry, Jerry, Randy, Rick, Steve, Dale, Glenn, Craig, Keith, Barry. A girl usually had a middle name and it was usually one syllable, Sue, Ann, Lee, Lou, Jo, Kay, Lynn, Rae, so that Linda Sue and Carol Ann and Peggy Lou were said as one name, which the American option does; a boy had an initial or a middle name that carried his father's or an uncle's, Donald R., Gary Wayne, Larry Dale, Bobby Ray. Nicknames were used from childhood, Debbie, Cindy, Patty, Kathy, Judy, Sandy, Sherry and Bobby, Jimmy, Danny, Ricky, Buddy, Butch, Chip, Skip, Rusty, and for many people the nickname was simply the name. The surnames of the suburb were the settled second- and third-generation names of the midwest, Patterson, Henderson, Anderson, Nelson, Peterson, with the Italian, Polish, Jewish and German names that had come through the cities and were now in the suburbs too, Romano, Kowalczyk, Kaplan, Schmidt, Novak.

The American suburb option adds the forms of address of the era, because in the 1950s a married woman was Mrs Donald R. Henderson on her mail, her cheques and the church bulletin, and a man was Mr Gary L. Patterson, and the Jr. was a mark of the father's standing. Britain in the same years had a different top tier. Boys were David, John, Stephen, Michael, Peter, Robert and then the names that place a man in the fifties, Keith, Brian, Colin, Malcolm, Trevor, Graham, Roger, Alan, Barry, Terry, Derek, Clive, Nigel, Ian, Neil, Geoffrey, Roy; girls were Susan, Linda, Christine, Margaret, Janet, Patricia, Carol, Elizabeth, Jennifer, Pauline, Sandra, Maureen, Valerie, Jacqueline, Lesley, Gillian, Wendy, shortened to Sue, Chris, Jan, Pat, Liz, Jenny, Val, Jackie, Gill. British middle names were the old family ones, John, William, George, Mary, Ann, Jane, rather than the American one-syllable pairing, and the surnames are the everyday English ones, Hughes, Jenkins, Thompson, Roberts, Walker, Wright.

The American names are what a diner, a drive-in or a retro brand wants; the British ones fit a kitchen-sink drama, a Coronation Street or an Ealing comedy. For the decade before the war, the 1920s page; for the children of these people, the 1980s page; and for present-day names, the American and British pages.

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