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Marija vs Mark

American parents have registered 1,366,672 Marks since 1880, against 519 Marijas. Mark is still ahead, with 1,416 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Marija 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 2010, when Marija had 20 and Mark had 2,421.

Side by side

  Marija Mark
Total US births 5191,366,672
Most in one year 2158,860
Babies in 2025 under 51,416
Estimated living today 5101.1 million
Median age today 2959
Peak year 20081960
Best rank 6,350th girls6th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked244th
First recorded 19621880
Girls / boys 519 / 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 Marijas are over 29. That is 30 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 Marija Mark
Ireland 2728,607
England and Wales 11811,489
Poland 323,064
France 1102,285
Northern Ireland 31,751
Norway 369873
Switzerland 330656

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: Marija and Mark.