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Mariaelena vs Martha

American parents have registered 553,732 Marthas since 1880, against 2,030 Mariaelenas. Martha is still ahead, with 393 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Mariaelena Martha

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

Martha 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 2009, when Mariaelena had 36 and Martha had 451.

Side by side

  Mariaelena Martha
Total US births 2,030553,732
Most in one year 5810,673
Babies in 2025 21393
Estimated living today 1,900231,000
Median age today 3370
Peak year 19981947
Best rank 2,398th girls32nd girls
Rank in 2025 5,722nd712th
First recorded 19351880
Girls / boys 2,030 / 0551,741 / 1,991

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 Marthas alive today are over 70; half the Mariaelenas are over 33. That is 37 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 Mariaelena Martha
Italy 2,566 Maria Elena322

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: Mariaelena and Martha.