Mera vs Merle
American parents have registered 45,389 Merles since 1880, against 587 Meras. Merle is still ahead, with 38 babies in 2025.
Babies given each name, 1880–2025
Mera Merle
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, Merle for 136 years and Mera for 10 years. The lead changed hands 8 times.
Side by side
| Mera | Merle | |
|---|---|---|
| Total US births | 587 | 45,389 |
| Most in one year | 65 | 1,275 |
| Babies in 2025 | 13 | 38 |
| Estimated living today | 570 | 11,000 |
| Median age today | 7 | 72 |
| Peak year | 2019 | 1925 |
| Best rank | 2,651st girls | 175th boys |
| Rank in 2025 | 7,885th | 3,450th |
| First recorded | 1927 | 1880 |
| Girls / boys | 587 / 0 | 14,723 / 30,666 |
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 Merles alive today are over 72; half the Meras are over 7. That is 65 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 | Mera | Merle |
|---|---|---|
| England and Wales | 27 | 56 |
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: Mera and Merle.