Humanverse

Mada vs Maddison

American parents have registered 24,116 Maddisons since 1880, against 552 Madas. Maddison is still ahead, with 703 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Mada against Maddison, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Mada Maddison

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

Of the 102 years in which either name was published, Mada for 61 years and Maddison for 41 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Mada Maddison
Total US births 55224,116
Most in one year 211,167
Babies in 2025 under 5703
Estimated living today 12024,000
Median age today 7114
Peak year 19202009
Best rank 1,889th girls281st girls
Rank in 2025 unranked438th
First recorded 18871985
Girls / boys 552 / 024,063 / 53

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 Madas alive today are over 71; half the Maddisons are over 14. That is 57 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 Mada Maddison
France 565

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: Mada and Maddison.