Humanverse

Maddisen vs Madeline

American parents have registered 207,630 Madelines since 1880, against 545 Maddisens. Madeline is still ahead, with 3,086 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Maddisen 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 2010, when Maddisen had 30 and Madeline had 3,611.

Side by side

  Maddisen Madeline
Total US births 545207,630
Most in one year 325,869
Babies in 2025 under 53,086
Estimated living today 540158,000
Median age today 2122
Peak year 20051998
Best rank 4,267th girls50th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked81st
First recorded 19911880
Girls / boys 545 / 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.

Both names abroad

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

Country Maddisen Madeline
England and Wales 76,498

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 Madeline.