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Margaret vs Marielle

American parents have registered 1,268,519 Margarets since 1880, against 4,530 Marielles. Margaret is still ahead, with 2,436 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Margaret against Marielle, 1880 to 2025 0 8k 16k 24k 32k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Margaret Marielle

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

Margaret 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 2016, when Margaret had 2,217 and Marielle had 158.

Side by side

  Margaret Marielle
Total US births 1,268,5194,530
Most in one year 28,521158
Babies in 2025 2,436121
Estimated living today 484,0004,400
Median age today 6821
Peak year 19212016
Best rank 4th girls1,456th girls
Rank in 2025 112th1,692nd
First recorded 18801920
Girls / boys 1,264,774 / 3,7454,530 / 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 Margarets alive today are over 68; half the Marielles are over 21. That is 47 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 Margaret Marielle
France 3,05516,845
Ireland 18,1553
England and Wales 2,551115
Norway 912984

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: Margaret and Marielle.