Merrill vs Merry

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Merrill Merry

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, Merrill for 89 years and Merry for 57 years. The lead changed hands 24 times.

• 1880–1943 Merrill ahead
• 1944–1975 Merry ahead
• 1976–1993 Merrill ahead, apart from one short spell
• 2002–2005 Merry ahead
• 2006–2008 Merrill ahead
• 2013–2024 Merry ahead, apart from one short spell

17 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.

Where each one is strongest

• Merrill Utah (8.1×), Iowa (5.9×), Vermont (5.5×)
• Merry Michigan (2.3×), Minnesota (2.1×), Wisconsin (2.0×)

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

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