Humanverse

Maddisen vs Madeleine

American parents have registered 45,737 Madeleines since 1880, against 545 Maddisens. Madeleine is still ahead, with 679 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Maddisen against Madeleine, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Maddisen Madeleine

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

Madeleine has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1881 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2005, when Maddisen had 32 and Madeleine had 969.

Side by side

  Maddisen Madeleine
Total US births 54545,737
Most in one year 321,424
Babies in 2025 under 5679
Estimated living today 54039,000
Median age today 2120
Peak year 20051998
Best rank 4,267th girls217th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked454th
First recorded 19911881
Girls / boys 545 / 045,722 / 15

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 Maddisen Madeleine
England and Wales 713,024

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: Maddisen and Madeleine.