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Macen vs Mackenzie

American parents have registered 149,135 Mackenzies since 1880, against 969 Macens. Mackenzie is still ahead, with 1,442 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Macen against Mackenzie, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Macen Mackenzie

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

Mackenzie has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1973 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2024, when Macen had 37 and Mackenzie had 1,610.

Side by side

  Macen Mackenzie
Total US births 969149,135
Most in one year 567,105
Babies in 2025 241,442
Estimated living today 960147,000
Median age today 1321
Peak year 20102001
Best rank 2,287th boys40th girls
Rank in 2025 4,249th228th
First recorded 19921973
Girls / boys 5 / 964141,274 / 7,861

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 Mackenzies alive today are over 21; half the Macens are over 13. That is 8 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

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

Country Macen Mackenzie
England and Wales 175,774

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: Macen and Mackenzie.