Barbara
Feminine · “a foreign woman”
Barbara is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 1,436,695 girls against 4,136 boys since 1880. See Barbara as a boy name
Barbara is one of the oldest continuously used women's names in the West, and it has an unusually concrete afterlife: gunners and miners took its saint as their protector, and Spanish and Italian warships still call the powder room the santabarbara. The name has outlived the saint's own place in the calendar.
How old is the name Barbara?
Barbara was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Barbara alive today was born around 1948, making them about 77 years old. About 865,000 people named Barbara are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Barbara most popular?
Barbara peaked in 1937, reaching #2 nationally. Today it ranks #968, 966 places below that high. See the whole 1937 chart.
Where it comes from
From barbaros to Barbara
The story of Barbara
Saint Barbara is a legend rather than a documented life: the story shuts her in a tower by her father, has her converted while he is away, and ends with him killing her and being struck by lightning on the spot. Because of the lightning she became the protector of everyone who worked with fire and explosion, which meant miners, gunners, artillerymen, firefighters and later engineers, and because of the gunners the magazine of a Spanish or Italian warship is a santabarbara to this day. In 1969, when Rome revised its calendar, her feast was dropped from the general list precisely because nothing in the story could be verified. The name had been in use for something like fifteen hundred years by then and did not notice.
Meaning
a foreign woman
From the Greek barbaros, said of anyone whose speech a Greek could not follow. The name is the feminine of that word, and the harsher modern sense came later.
How the name formed
- barbaros
- Barbara
Related forms: Barbara · Barbe · Varvara · Borbala · Basia · Barbra
Pronouncing Barbara
BAR-bruh
Three syllables written, two said: almost no English speaker pronounces the middle a. Spanish and Italian keep all three, BAR-ba-ra, and the spelling Barbra simply writes down what English already does.
Nicknames for Barbara
High
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1880
- Most girls named
- 194846,826 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2reached in 1937
- Change vs 2022
- −4.3%264 in 2025, from 276
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Barbara in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Barbara in Spanish — same name
- Barbe in French — related form
- Varvara in Russian — transliteration
- Borbala in Hungarian — related form
- Basia in Polish — related form
- Barbra in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, Pennsylvania.
Barbaras among us
people named Barbara are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 6,088 born in 2025 was named Barbara
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Dorothy test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Barbara's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Dorothy climbed just as high around 1920, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Dorothy's path sketches the road Barbara is walking now.
Barbara has held the top-100 across 7 different decades — it has never depended on fashion, and names like that read the same at any age.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Barbara is headed
Barbara should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
High confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Barbara beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Barbara in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- It is recognized, spelled and said correctly across most of Europe and the Americas.
- It has short forms for every register: Barb for every day, Babs for affection, Basia in Polish.
- It has an unbroken written history reaching back to the early Church.
- It is strongly associated with one American generation, and a child today would be the only one in the class.
- Barbie is unavoidable, and the doll has made it a harder short form than it once was.
- The spelling is recorded for a small number of boys, though it reads overwhelmingly as a girl's name.
- The meaning is not flattering, and old enough that most people carrying the name never learn it.
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What they receive
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Barbara
Feminine · #968 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Barbaras are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 865,000 people named Barbara are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Barbara in 2025?
- Barbara ranks #968 among US girl names in 2025, with 264 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Barbara?
- About 1 in every 6,088 US girls born in 2025 was named Barbara — 264 in all.
- Will my child share the name Barbara with classmates?
- Barbara will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Barbara
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Zora#968 · Elia#970 · Leylani#970 · Aleah#965 · Mazie#965 · Nancy#965 · Tru#972 · Ashlyn#972
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Barbara? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Barbara and another name?
See them side by side — full stats, history and a gentle verdict.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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