Humanverse

Maddison vs Madge

American parents have registered 24,116 Maddisons since 1880, against 13,430 Madges. Maddison is still ahead, with 703 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Maddison against Madge, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Maddison Madge

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

Of the 141 years in which either name was published, Madge for 100 years and Maddison for 41 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Maddison Madge
Total US births 24,11613,430
Most in one year 1,167464
Babies in 2025 703under 5
Estimated living today 24,0001,600
Median age today 1478
Peak year 20091920
Best rank 281st girls302nd girls
Rank in 2025 438thunranked
First recorded 19851880
Girls / boys 24,063 / 5313,430 / 0

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 Madges alive today are over 78; half the Maddisons are over 14. That is 64 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

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

Country Maddison Madge
Ireland 2868
France 6510

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: Maddison and Madge.