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Madelyn vs Madelyne

American parents have registered 116,060 Madelyns since 1880, against 3,502 Madelynes. Madelyn is still ahead, with 3,362 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Madelyn against Madelyne, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Madelyn Madelyne

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

Madelyn has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1890 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1975, when Madelyn had 83 and Madelyne had 13.

Side by side

  Madelyn Madelyne
Total US births 116,0603,502
Most in one year 4,572129
Babies in 2025 3,36281
Estimated living today 107,0003,000
Median age today 1421
Peak year 20082000
Best rank 64th girls1,425th girls
Rank in 2025 70th2,256th
First recorded 18901911
Girls / boys 116,010 / 503,502 / 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 Madelynes alive today are over 21; half the Madelyns are over 14. That is 7 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 Madelyn Madelyne
England and Wales 79942
France 20300

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: Madelyn and Madelyne.