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Marie vs Marleigh

American parents have registered 542,270 Maries since 1880, against 6,111 Marleighs. Marie is still ahead, with 474 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Marie Marleigh

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 2021, when Marie had 500 and Marleigh had 419.

Side by side

  Marie Marleigh
Total US births 542,2706,111
Most in one year 12,774419
Babies in 2025 474261
Estimated living today 179,0006,100
Median age today 669
Peak year 19202021
Best rank 13th girls689th girls
Rank in 2025 617th975th
First recorded 18801985
Girls / boys 540,077 / 2,1936,111 / 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 Maries alive today are over 66; half the Marleighs are over 9. That is 57 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 Marleigh
Ireland 7,7804
England and Wales 1,845213
Scotland 1,92718

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 Marleigh.