Maxie vs Maxwell
American parents have registered 109,467 Maxwells since 1880, against 8,672 Maxies. Maxwell is still ahead, with 1,939 babies in 2025.
Babies given each name, 1880–2025
Maxie 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
Of the 145 years in which either name was published, Maxwell for 77 years and Maxie for 68 years. The lead changed hands 12 times.
- 1880–1883 Maxwell ahead
- 1886–1911 Maxie ahead, apart from one short spell
- 1912–1916 Maxwell ahead
- 1917–1954 Maxie ahead
- 1963–2025 Maxwell ahead
7 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.
Side by side
| Maxie | Maxwell | |
|---|---|---|
| Total US births | 8,672 | 109,467 |
| Most in one year | 215 | 3,773 |
| Babies in 2025 | 23 | 1,939 |
| Estimated living today | 3,000 | 103,000 |
| Median age today | 66 | 17 |
| Peak year | 1935 | 2014 |
| Best rank | 514th boys | 107th boys |
| Rank in 2025 | 9,714th | 189th |
| First recorded | 1884 | 1880 |
| Girls / boys | 4,025 / 4,647 | 735 / 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 Maxies alive today are over 66; half the Maxwells are over 17. That is 49 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.
Where each one is strongest
- Maxie South Carolina (10.9×), Kentucky (6.3×), Tennessee (4.4×)
- Maxwell Utah (2.3×), Minnesota (2.2×), New Hampshire (2.1×)
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 | Maxie | Maxwell |
|---|---|---|
| England and Wales | 64 | 10,280 |
| Scotland | 3 | 707 |
| France | 25 | 290 |
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: Maxie and Maxwell.