Humanverse

Mark vs Martine

American parents have registered 1,366,672 Marks since 1880, against 3,018 Martines. Mark is still ahead, with 1,416 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Mark Martine

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 1908, when Mark had 74 and Martine had 6.

Side by side

  Mark Martine
Total US births 1,366,6723,018
Most in one year 58,860214
Babies in 2025 1,4168
Estimated living today 1.1 million2,500
Median age today 5945
Peak year 19601981
Best rank 6th boys791st girls
Rank in 2025 244th10,917th
First recorded 18801894
Girls / boys 4,496 / 1,362,1762,705 / 313

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 Martines are over 45. That is 14 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 Mark Martine
France 2,285320,170
Ireland 28,60733
Scotland 19,843139
England and Wales 11,489181
Norway 8737,826
Northern Ireland 1,7513
Belgium 29923

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: Mark and Martine.