Humanverse

Maxene vs Maxine

American parents have registered 115,989 Maxines since 1880, against 506 Maxenes. Maxine is still ahead, with 597 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Maxene Maxine

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

Maxine has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1884 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2015, when Maxene had 6 and Maxine had 234.

Side by side

  Maxene Maxine
Total US births 506115,989
Most in one year 303,672
Babies in 2025 8597
Estimated living today 11038,000
Median age today 7971
Peak year 19241924
Best rank 1,533rd girls77th girls
Rank in 2025 10,917th496th
First recorded 19141884
Girls / boys 506 / 0115,612 / 377

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 Maxenes alive today are over 79; half the Maxines are over 71. That is 8 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 Maxene Maxine
France 105,225

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: Maxene and Maxine.