Humanverse

Madalene vs Maddox

American parents have registered 48,944 Maddoxes since 1880, against 1,426 Madalenes. Maddox is still ahead, with 1,730 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Madalene against Maddox, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Madalene Maddox

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 115 years in which either name was published, Madalene for 85 years and Maddox for 30 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Madalene Maddox
Total US births 1,42648,944
Most in one year 493,147
Babies in 2025 81,730
Estimated living today 55049,000
Median age today 3310
Peak year 19192017
Best rank 1,026th girls136th boys
Rank in 2025 10,917th209th
First recorded 18901995
Girls / boys 1,426 / 01,825 / 47,119

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 Madalenes alive today are over 33; half the Maddoxes are over 10. That is 23 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 Madalene Maddox
England and Wales 172,083

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: Madalene and Maddox.