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Maggy vs Magnolia

American parents have registered 23,403 Magnolias since 1880, against 518 Maggys. Magnolia is still ahead, with 2,233 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Maggy against Magnolia, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Maggy Magnolia

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 146 years in which either name was published, Magnolia for 143 years and Maggy for 3 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Maggy Magnolia
Total US births 51823,403
Most in one year 222,233
Babies in 2025 62,233
Estimated living today 51019,000
Median age today 214
Peak year 20082025
Best rank 6,130th girls124th girls
Rank in 2025 13,208th124th
First recorded 19631880
Girls / boys 518 / 023,403 / 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 Maggys alive today are over 21; half the Magnolias are over 4. That is 17 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

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

Country Maggy Magnolia
France 2,380265
England and Wales 871

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: Maggy and Magnolia.