Humanverse

Maddy vs Madeline

American parents have registered 207,630 Madelines since 1880, against 884 Maddys. Madeline is still ahead, with 3,086 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Maddy 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 2024, when Maddy had 61 and Madeline had 2,922.

Side by side

  Maddy Madeline
Total US births 884207,630
Most in one year 615,869
Babies in 2025 393,086
Estimated living today 880158,000
Median age today 1222
Peak year 20241998
Best rank 2,775th girls50th girls
Rank in 2025 3,780th81st
First recorded 19461880
Girls / boys 884 / 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.

Which name is older

Half of the Madelines alive today are over 22; half the Maddys are over 12. That is 10 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 Maddy Madeline
France 4,9654,105
England and Wales 4336,498
Belgium 39393
Scotland 3255
Switzerland 5956
Northern Ireland 358

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: Maddy and Madeline.