Humanverse

Maram vs Maria

American parents have registered 570,389 Marias since 1880, against 901 Marams. Maria is still ahead, with 2,893 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Maram against Maria, 1880 to 2025 0 3k 6k 9k 12k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Maram Maria

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

Maria 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 2018, when Maram had 42 and Maria had 2,621.

Side by side

  Maram Maria
Total US births 901570,389
Most in one year 4610,197
Babies in 2025 202,893
Estimated living today 890466,000
Median age today 1445
Peak year 20121964
Best rank 3,464th girls41st girls
Rank in 2025 5,917th87th
First recorded 19821880
Girls / boys 901 / 0566,111 / 4,278

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 Marias alive today are over 45; half the Marams are over 14. That is 31 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 Maram Maria
France 1,270144,240
Italy 72441,935
England and Wales 19817,826
Ireland 310,050
Belgium 1412,575

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: Maram and Maria.