Humanverse

Meg vs Meggie

American parents have registered 5,321 Megs since 1880, against 514 Meggies. Neither name reached five babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Meg against Meggie, 1880 to 2025 0 50 100 150 200 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Meg Meggie

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 81 years in which either name was published, Meg for 78 years and Meggie for 3 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Meg Meggie
Total US births 5,321514
Most in one year 19647
Babies in 2025 under 5under 5
Estimated living today 4,900500
Median age today 4835
Peak year 19591985
Best rank 714th girls2,203rd girls
Rank in 2025 unrankedunranked
First recorded 19411980
Girls / boys 5,321 / 0514 / 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 Megs alive today are over 48; half the Meggies are over 35. That is 13 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 Meg Meggie
France 345630
England and Wales 68523
Belgium 175

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: Meg and Meggie.