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Mariah vs Mariyah

American parents have registered 115,279 Mariahs since 1880, against 6,555 Mariyahs. Mariah is still ahead, with 693 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Mariah against Mariyah, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Mariah Mariyah

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

Mariah 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 2019, when Mariah had 1,197 and Mariyah had 190.

Side by side

  Mariah Mariyah
Total US births 115,2796,555
Most in one year 5,454431
Babies in 2025 69375
Estimated living today 112,0006,500
Median age today 2414
Peak year 19962009
Best rank 63rd girls675th girls
Rank in 2025 447th2,387th
First recorded 18801990
Girls / boys 115,096 / 1836,555 / 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 Mariahs alive today are over 24; half the Mariyahs are over 14. That is 10 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 Mariah Mariyah
England and Wales 1,310971
France 305185
Scotland 1714

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: Mariah and Mariyah.