Humanverse

Marc vs Marie

American parents have registered 542,270 Maries since 1880, against 141,137 Marcs. Marie is still ahead, with 474 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Marc against Marie, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Marc Marie

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, Marie for 104 years and Marc for 42 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Marc Marie
Total US births 141,137542,270
Most in one year 5,03412,774
Babies in 2025 162474
Estimated living today 120,000179,000
Median age today 5166
Peak year 19701920
Best rank 60th boys13th girls
Rank in 2025 1,235th617th
First recorded 19011880
Girls / boys 533 / 140,604540,077 / 2,193

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 Maries alive today are over 66; half the Marcs are over 51. That is 15 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 Marc Marie
France 238,5102,256,975
Belgium 54815,104
Norway 18112,308
Ireland 1,2347,780
Scotland 4,3341,927
Switzerland 2,5691,881
England and Wales 2,2161,845
Italy 2681,171
Northern Ireland 34863
Poland 50294

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: Marc and Marie.