Humanverse

Maddi vs Madison

American parents have registered 427,675 Madisons since 1880, against 573 Maddis. Madison is still ahead, with 4,963 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Maddi against Madison, 1880 to 2025 0 6k 12k 18k 24k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Maddi Madison

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

Madison 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 1987, when Maddi had 7 and Madison had 878.

Side by side

  Maddi Madison
Total US births 573427,675
Most in one year 2922,292
Babies in 2025 164,963
Estimated living today 570421,000
Median age today 1420
Peak year 20082001
Best rank 5,013th girls2nd girls
Rank in 2025 6,838th40th
First recorded 19871880
Girls / boys 573 / 0419,806 / 7,869

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 Madisons alive today are over 20; half the Maddis are over 14. That is 6 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 Madison
England and Wales 14218,835
France 2355,175

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 Madison.