Betty

girls’ nameFadedCompare

Betty is outside the top 1,000 in 2024, with 253 births. Its best rank was 2nd, in 1928–1934.

Rank in 2024: —outside the top 1,000
Births in 2024: 2530.02% of girls
Peak year: 193038,238 births
Best rank: #2first in 1928
Since 1880: 1,004,638people given the name

Babies named Betty, by year of birthgirls

The story in the numbers

1,001,019 girls have been named Betty in the United States since 1880, according to Social Security records. The busiest single year was 1930, with 38,238 births — 3.4% of all girls recorded that year.

The name has all but left use: 253 births in 2024, against 38,238 at the peak.

Half of everyone given the name was born by 1934, and the 1930s alone account for 30%. It has spent 117 of 145 years in the top 1,000, 61 of them in the top 100 and 24 in the top 10.

It is overwhelmingly a girl’s name: 3,619 boys have also been given it, 0.36% of the total.

Rank among girls, year by year

Higher on the chart = more popularrank (gaps = outside the top 1,000)

By decade

Decade	girls named Betty
1880s	1,519
1890s	3,196
1900s	7,921
1910s	44,894
1920s	283,097
1930s	300,408
1940s	194,622
1950s	103,204
1960s	38,396
1970s	11,707
1980s	5,163
1990s	2,638
2000s	1,445
2010s	1,742
2020s	1,067

In 1930, its biggest year

Betty was the 2nd most given girl’s name that year. The top five girls’ names of 1930 were Mary, Betty, Dorothy, Helen and Margaret. See all of 1930.

Names that rose and fell with Betty

Same sex, most similar popularity curve over 145 years, in five-year steps — the shape of the line, not the size.

Other spellings in the data

Bettie38,385 ever

What this page does not tell you. The Social Security data records how many babies were given a name, not what the name means or where it comes from — so neither do we. Counts cover people with a Social Security number; names given to fewer than five babies in a year are withheld. More on the data.