Melinda vs Mell

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Melinda Mell

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, Melinda for 143 years and Mell for 3 years. The lead changed hands 6 times.

• 1880–1917 Melinda ahead
• 1918 Mell ahead
• 1919–1925 Melinda ahead
• 1926 Mell ahead
• 1927 Melinda ahead
• 1928 Mell ahead
• 1929–2025 Melinda ahead

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 Mells alive today are over 69; half the Melindas are over 54. That is 15 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.

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

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