Mel vs Melanie

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Mel Melanie

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 137 years in which either name was published, Melanie for 115 years and Mel for 22 years. The lead changed hands 16 times.

• 1886–1901 Melanie ahead
• 1902–1904 Mel ahead
• 1905–1910 Melanie ahead
• 1922–1939 Mel ahead, apart from one short spell
• 1940–2025 Melanie ahead

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

Side by side

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 Mels alive today are over 62; half the Melanies are over 40. That is 22 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Mel California (3.7×), New York (3.2×), Illinois (2.6×)
• Melanie Nevada (1.9×), Utah (1.7×), Hawaii (1.4×)

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.

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

• Mel vs Melissa
• Mel vs Melvin
• Mel vs Melinda
• Mel vs Melody
• Mel vs Melba
• Melanie vs Melissa
• Melanie vs Melvin
• Melanie vs Melinda