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Marie vs Marilynn

American parents have registered 542,270 Maries since 1880, against 13,282 Marilynns. Marie is still ahead, with 474 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Marie against Marilynn, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Marie Marilynn

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

Marie 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 2014, when Marie had 531 and Marilynn had 84.

Side by side

  Marie Marilynn
Total US births 542,27013,282
Most in one year 12,774407
Babies in 2025 47441
Estimated living today 179,0007,600
Median age today 6671
Peak year 19201947
Best rank 13th girls401st girls
Rank in 2025 617th3,645th
First recorded 18801914
Girls / boys 540,077 / 2,19313,282 / 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 Marilynns alive today are over 71; half the Maries are over 66. That is 5 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 Marie Marilynn
France 2,256,9755

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: Marie and Marilynn.