Margaret
Margaret reached its high-water mark in 1921 at number 4, and has been recorded 1,268,519 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 112th. About 484,000 Margarets are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 68.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Margaret boys named Margaret
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,268,519
- Estimated living today
- 484,000
- Median age today
- 68
- Peak year
- 1921
- Best rank
- 4th
- Rank in 2025
- 112th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 1,264,774 / 3,745
How old the living Margarets are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,268,519 babies given the name since 1880, about 484,000 are alive — 38 in every hundred. Roughly 37,000 of them are children and 274,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1957 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 Ancient Greek
From the name of 3rd century Saint Margaret the Virgin, from Middle English Margaret, from Old French Margaret (French Marguerite), from Latin Margarita, from Ancient Greek μαργαρίτης (“pearl”), ultimately from an Indo-Iranian source.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Margarets
- Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013)British stateswoman and prime minister
- Margaret Atwood (born 1939)Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, pépiniériste and inventor
- Margaret Mitchell (1900–1949)American author and journalist
- Margaret Mead (1901–1978)American anthropologist
- Margaret of Valois (1553–1615)Queen of France and Navarre until 1599 (1553-1615).
- Margaret of Valois-Angoulême (1492–1549)queen consort of Navarre
- Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon (1930–2002)British princess
- Margaret I of Denmark (1353–1412)Queen of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden
People named Margaret with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Margaret is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Margaret is most concentrated in Pennsylvania (1.9×), the District of Columbia (1.8×), Delaware (1.5×), Vermont (1.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1921
The most popular girls’ names the year Margaret peaked:
Margaret elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland girls | Margaret | 18,155 | 2nd |
| New Zealand girls | Margaret | 5,517 | 3rd |
| Scotland girls | Margaret | 3,376 | 22nd |
| France girls | Margaret | 3,055 | 190th |
| England and Wales girls | Margaret | 2,551 | 357th |
| Norway girls | Margaret | 912 | 108th |
| Italy girls | Margaret | 333 | — |
| Northern Ireland girls | Margaret | 182 | 119th |
| Poland girls | Margaret | 27 birth registrations | 400th |
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.
Margaret 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Margaret | 919 | 2,195 |
| Finland girls | Margaret | 58 | 507 |
| the Netherlands boys | Margaret | — | 18 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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 Margaret lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 882 women called Margaret 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alicante/Alacant | Margaret | 209 | 0.203 | 484 |
| Málaga | Margaret | 128 | 0.140 | 578 |
| Almería | Margaret | 39 | 0.103 | 770 |
| Murcia | Margaret | 58 | 0.073 | 874 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Margaret | 39 | 0.070 | 1,202 |
| Palmas, Las | Margaret | 39 | 0.066 | 1,390 |
Listed in 24 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 28 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
Margaret 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.