Barb
Meaning
short form of Barbara, from Greek barbaros, 'foreign, non-Greek'
The story
Barb is the short form of Barbara, says Behind the Name, and Barbara runs back through Latin barbarus to the Greek barbaros, "foreign, non-Greek"; legend gives it Saint Barbara, killed by her father Dioscorus, who was then killed by a bolt of lightning. What Barb has that most nicknames never get is its own paper trail: about 200 girls entered the books as Barb in the 1940s, about 1,460 in the 1950s and about 2,140 in the 1960s, exactly the era when Barbara filled American classrooms. Then the entries stop: after about 46 in the 1970s, the published record carries no further Barb line at all. A name that lived on birth certificates for four decades and then went back to being what it started as: something friends call you.
The formal names behind Barb
Barb is an established short form of this name.
Barbara · Greek origin · foreign woman
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Barb peaked in the 1960s.
The Barb deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Barb truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Barb fits with your family’s names and surname.
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