Marlin
About 22,834 American babies have been named Marlin since 1884, most of them around 1935. In 2025 it ranked 1,778th. About 13,000 Marlins are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 53.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Marlin boys named Marlin
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 22,834
- Estimated living today
- 13,000
- Median age today
- 53
- Peak year
- 1935
- Best rank
- 276th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,778th
- First recorded
- 1884
- Girls / boys
- 1,662 / 21,172
How old the living Marlins are
born that year still alive today
Of the 22,834 babies given the name since 1884, about 13,000 are alive — 56 in every hundred. Roughly 1,700 of them are children and 4,200 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1972 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.
Notable Marlins
- Marlin Stutzman (born 1976)American politician
People named Marlin with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Marlin is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Marlin is most concentrated in South Dakota (5.3×), North Dakota (4.7×), Pennsylvania (4.2×), Nebraska (3.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1935
The most popular boys’ names the year Marlin peaked:
Marlin elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Switzerland boys | Marlin | 49 | 908th |
| England and Wales boys | Marlin | 20 | 3,523rd |
| England and Wales girls | Marlin | 7 | 4,645th |
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.
Marlin: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Marlin | 47 | 0.004% | 664th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Marlin | 2 | 0.000% | 627th |
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.
Marlin by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 6 | 580th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Marlin 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 | Marlin | — | 7 |
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
Marlin 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.