Barbara
Masculine · “a foreign woman”
Barbara is given to girls far more often — 1,436,695 girls against 4,136 boys since 1880. See Barbara as a girl 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 first appears in US birth records in 1913 — 112 years ago. The typical Barbara alive today was born around 1944, making them about 81 years old. About 2,000 people named Barbara are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Barbara most popular?
Barbara peaked in 1938, reaching #454 nationally. See the whole 1938 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
- 1913
- Most boys named
- 1942164 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #454reached in 1938
- Change vs 1991
- −44.4%5 in 1993, from 9
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
Barbaras among us
people named Barbara are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Barbara sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
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
Masculine
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 2,000 people named Barbara are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Barbara in 2025?
- Barbara is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Barbara with classmates?
- Barbara will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More B names
The most-given names starting with B, all years combined.
Brian#339 · Benjamin#11 · Brandon#261 · Bryan#336 · Bruce#536 · Billy#1068 · Bobby#1097 · Bradley#403
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Barbara? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Barbara and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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