Humanverse

Maddi vs Madelyn

American parents have registered 116,060 Madelyns since 1880, against 573 Maddis. Madelyn is still ahead, with 3,362 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Maddi against Madelyn, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Maddi Madelyn

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

Madelyn has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1890 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1988, when Maddi had 7 and Madelyn had 170.

Side by side

  Maddi Madelyn
Total US births 573116,060
Most in one year 294,572
Babies in 2025 163,362
Estimated living today 570107,000
Median age today 1414
Peak year 20082008
Best rank 5,013th girls64th girls
Rank in 2025 6,838th70th
First recorded 19871890
Girls / boys 573 / 0116,010 / 50

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.

Both names abroad

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

Country Maddi Madelyn
England and Wales 142799
France 23520

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 Madelyn.