Marley
About 38,404 American babies have been named Marley since 1914, most of them around 2008. In 2025 it ranked 322nd. About 38,000 Marleys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 12.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Marley boys named Marley
Girls and boys called Marley
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 33,045 girls and 5,359 boys in all, and in 2025 the split was 950 to 131.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 45 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
- 38,404
- Estimated living today
- 38,000
- Median age today
- 12
- Peak year
- 2008
- Best rank
- 145th
- Rank in 2025
- 322nd
- First recorded
- 1914
- Girls / boys
- 33,045 / 5,359
How old the living Marleys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 38,404 babies given the name since 1914, about 38,000 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 30,000 of them are children and 110 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2013 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
From several different places in England, from Old English mære (“boundary”) or myrig (“pleasant”) or mearþ (“marten”) + lēah (“woodland clearing”). In the first case, equivalent.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Marleys
- Marley Shelton (born 1974)American actress
- Marley Aké (born 2001)French and Ivorian association football player
- Marley Marl (born 1962)American DJ, record producer and rapper
People named Marley with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Marley is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Marley is most concentrated in Utah (2.2×), Nevada (2.2×), Arizona (1.8×), Florida (1.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2008
The most popular girls’ names the year Marley peaked:
Marley elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Marley | 7,783 | 124th |
| France boys | Marley | 4,820 | 204th |
| England and Wales girls | Marley | 2,058 | 348th |
| France girls | Marley | 1,235 | 521st |
| Scotland girls | Marley | 371 | 180th |
| Scotland boys | Marley | 257 | 208th |
| Belgium boys | Marley | 172 | 617th |
| Switzerland boys | Marley | 134 | 572nd |
| New Zealand girls | Marley | 129 | 90th |
| Ireland boys | Marley | 80 | 362nd |
| Belgium girls | Marley | 75 | 896th |
| Ireland girls | Marley | 74 | 336th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Marley | 51 | 237th |
| Switzerland girls | Marley | 44 | 1,013th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Marley | 24 | 227th |
| Poland boys | Marley | 7 birth registrations | 595th |
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.
Marley: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Marley | 63 | 0.005% | 589th |
| German girls | Switzerland | Marley | 25 | 0.002% | 920th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Marley | 70 | 0.016% | 261st |
| French girls | Switzerland | Marley | 18 | 0.004% | 463rd |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Marley | 1 | 0.002% | 191st |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Marley | 1 | 0.002% | 188th |
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, Marley is most concentrated in Vaud, where 0.03% of children were given it – 43 of them.
Marley: rank by region
In 2024, Marley was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Marley | 839 | 5 |
In 2017, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Marley appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (298th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – 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.
Marley by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 5 | 519th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Marley 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 boys | Marley | 8 | 25 |
| Finland girls | Marley | 6 | 18 |
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
Marley 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.