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Maxen vs Maxwell

American parents have registered 109,467 Maxwells since 1880, against 517 Maxens. Maxwell is still ahead, with 1,939 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Maxen against Maxwell, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Maxen Maxwell

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

Maxwell 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 2019, when Maxen had 44 and Maxwell had 2,693.

Side by side

  Maxen Maxwell
Total US births 517109,467
Most in one year 593,773
Babies in 2025 201,939
Estimated living today 510103,000
Median age today 917
Peak year 20162014
Best rank 2,255th boys107th boys
Rank in 2025 4,857th189th
First recorded 20021880
Girls / boys 0 / 517735 / 108,732

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 Maxwells alive today are over 17; half the Maxens are over 9. That is 8 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 Maxen Maxwell
England and Wales 6110,280
France 130290

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: Maxen and Maxwell.