Madison
About 427,675 American babies have been named Madison since 1880, most of them around 2001. In 2025 it ranked 40th. About 421,000 Madisons are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 20.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Madison boys named Madison
Girls and boys called Madison
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Madison crossed from boys to girls in 1985, and has stayed there for 41 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 100% girls, which is roughly where it still is.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 110 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 427,675
- Estimated living today
- 421,000
- Median age today
- 20
- Peak year
- 2001
- Best rank
- 2nd
- Rank in 2025
- 40th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 419,806 / 7,869
How old the living Madisons are
born that year still alive today
Of the 427,675 babies given the name since 1880, about 421,000 are alive — 98 in every hundred. Roughly 163,000 of them are children and 570 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2005 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 a surname
Usually derived from Mathieson (Matthew + -son), occasionally from Middle English Maddy (“Maud”) + -son. In the movie Splash, its use as a given name derives from Manhattan’s Madison Avenue.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Madisons
- Madison Beer (born 1999)American singer
- Madison Keys (born 1995)US American tennis player
- Madison Iseman (born 1997)American actress
- Madison Pettis (born 1998)American actress
- Madison Brengle (born 1990)American tennis player
- Madison Davenport (born 1996)American actress
- Madison Bailey (born 1999)American actress
- Madison Grant (1865–1937)American lawyer, eugenicist, and conservationist
People named Madison with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Madison is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Madison is most concentrated in Nevada (2.1×), Alaska (1.7×), Utah (1.6×), Delaware (1.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2001
The most popular girls’ names the year Madison peaked:
Madison elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Madison | 18,721 | 39th |
| France girls | Madison | 5,090 | 184th |
| New Zealand girls | Madison | 3,534 | 15th |
| Scotland girls | Madison | 1,442 | 51st |
| Ireland girls | Madison | 1,092 | 89th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Madison | 766 | 42nd |
| Belgium girls | Madison | 626 | 143rd |
| Switzerland girls | Madison | 148 | 545th |
| Italy girls | Madison | 125 | — |
| England and Wales boys | Madison | 114 | 1,629th |
| France boys | Madison | 85 | 6,613th |
| Poland girls | Madison | 7 birth registrations | 594th |
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.
Madison: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Madison | 49 | 0.004% | 621st |
| French girls | Switzerland | Madison | 91 | 0.021% | 186th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Madison | 8 | 0.012% | 73rd |
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.
By canton, Madison is most concentrated in Vaud, where 0.03% of children were given it – 42 of them.
Madison: rank by region
In 2013, Madison was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Madison | 511 | 5 |
In 2021, Madison was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Madison | 7 | 2 |
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.
Madison by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 4 | 544th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Madison 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 | Madison | 31 | 50 |
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.
Related names
Madison against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
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.