Humanverse

Maye vs Maynard

American parents have registered 14,940 Maynards since 1880, against 1,956 Mayes. But in 2025 it was Maye that was commoner, 9 babies to 7.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Maye against Maynard, 1880 to 2025 0 100 200 300 400 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Maye Maynard

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 146 years in which either name was published, Maynard for 121 years and Maye for 25 years. The lead changed hands 13 times.

9 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Maye Maynard
Total US births 1,95614,940
Most in one year 58398
Babies in 2025 97
Estimated living today 3204,000
Median age today 6569
Peak year 19211922
Best rank 969th girls279th boys
Rank in 2025 10,107th9,714th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 1,956 / 022 / 14,918

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 Maynards alive today are over 69; half the Mayes are over 65. That is 4 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 Maye Maynard
England and Wales 199

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: Maye and Maynard.