Humanverse

Melek vs Melody

American parents have registered 115,084 Melodys since 1880, against 645 Meleks. Melody is still ahead, with 3,095 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Melek against Melody, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Melek Melody

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

Melody has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1914 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2022, when Melek had 105 and Melody had 2,573.

Side by side

  Melek Melody
Total US births 645115,084
Most in one year 1053,095
Babies in 2025 353,095
Estimated living today 640107,000
Median age today 435
Peak year 20222025
Best rank 1,992nd girls79th girls
Rank in 2025 4,067th79th
First recorded 19871914
Girls / boys 578 / 67114,914 / 170

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 Melodys alive today are over 35; half the Meleks are over 4. That is 31 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 Melek Melody
France 2,13510,700
England and Wales 4083,835
Italy 283581
Switzerland 324384
Belgium 467240
Scotland 3271
Ireland 6117
Poland 869

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: Melek and Melody.