Humanverse

Maelle vs Maeve

American parents have registered 29,608 Maeves since 1880, against 536 Maelles. Maeve is still ahead, with 3,153 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Maelle against Maeve, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Maelle Maeve

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

Maeve has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1940 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2010, when Maelle had 51 and Maeve had 546.

Side by side

  Maelle Maeve
Total US births 53629,608
Most in one year 613,153
Babies in 2025 613,153
Estimated living today 53029,000
Median age today 85
Peak year 20252025
Best rank 2,778th girls76th girls
Rank in 2025 2,778th76th
First recorded 20011940
Girls / boys 536 / 029,608 / 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 Maelles alive today are over 8; half the Maeves are over 5. That is 3 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 Maelle Maeve
France 36,080705
England and Wales 657,195
Belgium 2,425 Maëlle167
Switzerland 1,167 Maëlle86

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: Maelle and Maeve.