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Marianna vs Mark

American parents have registered 1,366,672 Marks since 1880, against 18,444 Mariannas. Mark is still ahead, with 1,416 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Marianna 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

Mark 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 1908, when Marianna had 18 and Mark had 74.

Side by side

  Marianna Mark
Total US births 18,4441,366,672
Most in one year 41958,860
Babies in 2025 3081,416
Estimated living today 15,0001.1 million
Median age today 2259
Peak year 20061960
Best rank 678th girls6th boys
Rank in 2025 872nd244th
First recorded 18831880
Girls / boys 18,444 / 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 Mariannas are over 22. 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 Marianna Mark
Ireland 7428,607
Scotland 2919,843
Poland 9,4083,064
Italy 11,438876
England and Wales 63911,489
France 1,2052,285
Northern Ireland 81,751
Norway 5873
Switzerland 118656
Belgium 20299

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: Marianna and Mark.