Humanverse

Mabel

Mabel reached its high-water mark in 1915 at number 62, and has been recorded 142,693 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 201st. About 22,000 Mabels are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 13.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Mabel boys named Mabel

By the numbers

Total US births
142,693
Estimated living today
22,000
Median age today
13
Peak year
1915
Best rank
62nd
Rank in 2025
201st
First recorded
1880
Girls / boys
142,284 / 409

How old the living Mabels are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 142,693 babies given the name since 1880, about 22,000 are alive — 15 in every hundred. Roughly 12,000 of them are children and 6,300 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2012 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where the name comes from

Origin Latin

from Latin amābilis (“lovable”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Mabels

People named Mabel with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Mabel is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Mabel is most concentrated in West Virginia (3.3×), North Dakota (2.9×), Hawaii (2.4×), Kentucky (2.3×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1915

The most popular girls’ names the year Mabel peaked:

All the names of 1915

Mabel elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
England and Wales girls Mabel 9,604 16th
Scotland girls Mabel 296 58th
Ireland girls Mabel 261 94th
Italy girls Mabel 168
Northern Ireland girls Mabel 116 62nd
France girls Mabel 65 5,610th
Belgium girls Mabel 48 685th
Switzerland girls Mabel 30 1,414th
Poland girls Mabel 2 birth registrations 729th

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Mabel: births by region

RegionCountry Spelling BirthsShare of the region Best rank
German girls Switzerland Mabel 22 0.002% 1,050th
French girls Switzerland Mabel 4 0.001% 759th
Italian girls Switzerland Mabel 4 0.006% 164th

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

Mabel: rank by region

In 2025, Mabel was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.

Region Spelling Place Children
Flanders Mabel 584 8

In 2024, Mabel was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

Region Spelling Place Children
Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste Mabel 7 2

In 2024, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Mabel appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (308th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.

Mabel by city

CityYears BirthsBest rank
Berlin girls 2017–2023 4 425th

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Mabel among the living

How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.

Country Spelling First forename Any forename
Finland girls Mabel 9 32

A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.

Where Mabel lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 1,290 women called Mabel were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Women: the provinces where it is densest

Province Spelling People Per thousand Place there
Asturias Mabel 61 0.115 686
Pontevedra Mabel 45 0.092 726
Santa Cruz de Tenerife Mabel 45 0.081 1,106
Lugo Mabel 13 0.077 851
Toledo Mabel 29 0.077 908
Coruña, A Mabel 45 0.076 798

Listed in 42 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 10 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

Mabel against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

Compare Mabel with a name of your own

Try it on yourself

Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.