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Macauley vs Mack

American parents have registered 42,900 Macks since 1880, against 290 Macauleys. Mack is still ahead, with 668 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Macauley against Mack, 1880 to 2025 0 250 500 750 1k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Macauley Mack

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Mack has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1992, when Macauley had 34 and Mack had 109.

Side by side

  Macauley Mack
Total US births 29042,900
Most in one year 34847
Babies in 2025 6668
Estimated living today 28020,000
Median age today 2644
Peak year 19921942
Best rank 2,834th boys190th boys
Rank in 2025 10,695th463rd
First recorded 19911880
Girls / boys 30 / 260180 / 42,720

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Macks alive today are over 44; half the Macauleys are over 26. That is 18 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Macauley Mack
England and Wales 2,162462
Scotland 40177

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Macauley and Mack.