1940s Name Generator

Names from the 1940s have a recognisable sound because the decade sat between two naming eras. The most common given names for babies born in the 1940s were James, Robert, John, William and Richard for boys and Mary, Linda, Barbara, Patricia and Carol for girls, but the adults of the decade, the soldiers, riveters and radio announcers, carried names from the 1910s and 1920s: Harold, Walter, Eugene, Clarence, Vernon, Dorothy, Mildred, Evelyn, Thelma and Gladys. A realistic 1940s cast mixes both layers, so a young GI named Jimmy Lee writes home to a mother named Hattie.

Surnames reflect the real demographic mix of 1940s America. Old-stock English and Scots-Irish names like Whitaker, Pruitt and Caldwell sit next to Irish (Gallagher, Sheehan), Italian (Caruso, Santoro), Polish (Kowalski, Wojcik), German and Jewish (Schneider, Kaplan), Scandinavian (Haugen, Lindqvist), Mexican-American (Montoya, Trujillo) and Japanese- and Chinese-American (Nakamura, Fong) families, all of whom were part of the wartime story. Double first names such as Betty Lou, Mary Ellen and Bobby Joe were everywhere, as were formal middle initials on anything official.

Use these names for WWII fiction, a grandparent's backstory, swing-era characters, vintage advertising mock-ups or historical tabletop games. Pick an older-sounding first name for anyone born before 1925 and a Linda- or Gary-style name for a child of the decade.