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Meredith vs Merida

American parents have registered 82,044 Merediths since 1880, against 1,572 Meridas. Meredith is still ahead, with 656 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Meredith against Merida, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Meredith Merida

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 133 years in which either name was published, Meredith for 132 years and Merida for 1 year. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Meredith Merida
Total US births 82,0441,572
Most in one year 2,087116
Babies in 2025 65665
Estimated living today 73,0001,500
Median age today 398
Peak year 19802017
Best rank 140th girls1,792nd girls
Rank in 2025 469th2,645th
First recorded 18831880
Girls / boys 77,787 / 4,2571,567 / 5

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 Merediths alive today are over 39; half the Meridas are over 8. 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 Meredith Merida
England and Wales 1,578149
France 1,10540 Mérida
Scotland 6361

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: Meredith and Merida.