Humanverse

Maddi vs Madeline

American parents have registered 207,630 Madelines since 1880, against 573 Maddis. Madeline is still ahead, with 3,086 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Maddi against Madeline, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Maddi Madeline

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

Madeline 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 2013, when Maddi had 29 and Madeline had 3,371.

Side by side

  Maddi Madeline
Total US births 573207,630
Most in one year 295,869
Babies in 2025 163,086
Estimated living today 570158,000
Median age today 1422
Peak year 20081998
Best rank 5,013th girls50th girls
Rank in 2025 6,838th81st
First recorded 19871880
Girls / boys 573 / 0207,385 / 245

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 Madelines alive today are over 22; half the Maddis are over 14. That is 8 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 Maddi Madeline
England and Wales 1426,498
France 2354,105

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: Maddi and Madeline.