Humanverse

Marice vs Mark

American parents have registered 1,366,672 Marks since 1880, against 1,184 Marices. Mark is still ahead, with 1,416 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Marice 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 1930, when Marice had 16 and Mark had 603.

Side by side

  Marice Mark
Total US births 1,1841,366,672
Most in one year 3658,860
Babies in 2025 under 51,416
Estimated living today 9301.1 million
Median age today 4859
Peak year 19761960
Best rank 1,932nd boys6th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked244th
First recorded 19191880
Girls / boys 467 / 7174,496 / 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 Marices are over 48. That is 11 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Marice Mark
Ireland 328,607

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: Marice and Mark.