Humanverse

Margot vs Mark

American parents have registered 1,366,672 Marks since 1880, against 25,568 Margots. But in 2025 it was Margot that was commoner, 2,575 babies to 1,416.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Margot against Mark, 1880 to 2025 0 15k 30k 45k 60k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Margot Mark

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, Mark for 141 years and Margot for 5 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Margot Mark
Total US births 25,5681,366,672
Most in one year 2,57558,860
Babies in 2025 2,5751,416
Estimated living today 23,0001.1 million
Median age today 659
Peak year 20251960
Best rank 102nd girls6th boys
Rank in 2025 102nd244th
First recorded 18941880
Girls / boys 25,568 / 04,496 / 1,362,176

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 Marks alive today are over 59; half the Margots are over 6. That is 53 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 Margot Mark
France 51,1302,285
Ireland 20528,607
New Zealand 24623,154
Scotland 25119,843
England and Wales 8,34611,489
Belgium 4,175299
Poland 203,064
Italy 1,641876
Northern Ireland 1571,751
Norway 405873
Switzerland 616656

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: Margot and Mark.