Humanverse

Mark vs Maryam

American parents have registered 1,366,672 Marks since 1880, against 13,845 Maryams. Mark is still ahead, with 1,416 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Mark Maryam

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 2025, when Mark had 1,416 and Maryam had 869.

Side by side

  Mark Maryam
Total US births 1,366,67213,845
Most in one year 58,860869
Babies in 2025 1,416869
Estimated living today 1.1 million14,000
Median age today 5910
Peak year 19602025
Best rank 6th boys351st girls
Rank in 2025 244th351st
First recorded 18801946
Girls / boys 4,496 / 1,362,17613,845 / 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 Marks alive today are over 59; half the Maryams are over 10. That is 49 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 Maryam
Ireland 28,607313
England and Wales 11,48915,606
Scotland 19,843525
France 2,28512,060
Poland 3,064129
Italy 8761,735
Belgium 2992,234
Norway 8731,128
Northern Ireland 1,75112
Switzerland 656319

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 Maryam.