Humanverse

Morgen vs Morley

American parents have registered 2,454 Morgens since 1880, against 566 Morleys. Morgen is still ahead, with 6 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Morgen against Morley, 1880 to 2025 0 25 50 75 100 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Morgen Morley

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 104 years in which either name was published, Morgen for 60 years and Morley for 44 years. The lead changed hands 7 times.

Side by side

  Morgen Morley
Total US births 2,454566
Most in one year 10024
Babies in 2025 6under 5
Estimated living today 2,400140
Median age today 2669
Peak year 19941918
Best rank 1,770th girls1,767th boys
Rank in 2025 13,208thunranked
First recorded 19591909
Girls / boys 1,862 / 59248 / 518

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 Morleys alive today are over 69; half the Morgens are over 26. That is 43 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 Morgen Morley
England and Wales 131101

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: Morgen and Morley.