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Marisol vs Mary

American parents have registered 4,156,654 Marys since 1880, against 35,356 Marisols. Mary is still ahead, with 2,230 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Marisol against Mary, 1880 to 2025 0 20k 40k 60k 80k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Marisol Mary

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

Mary 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 2006, when Marisol had 1,021 and Mary had 4,126.

Side by side

  Marisol Mary
Total US births 35,3564,156,654
Most in one year 1,20774,171
Babies in 2025 4232,230
Estimated living today 34,0001.7 million
Median age today 3069
Peak year 19961921
Best rank 234th girls1st girls
Rank in 2025 666th125th
First recorded 19531880
Girls / boys 35,041 / 3154,141,481 / 15,173

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 Marys alive today are over 69; half the Marisols are over 30. That is 39 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 Marisol Mary
England and Wales 257,334
France 3106,930
Italy 3,094837
Switzerland 110129
Belgium 5163

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: Marisol and Mary.