Humanverse

Marlowe

About 6,467 American babies have been named Marlowe since 1912, most of them around 2025. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 523rd. About 5,800 Marlowes are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 7.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 150 300 450 600 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Marlowe boys named Marlowe

Girls and boys called Marlowe

Share of the name given to girls, 1880 to 2025 0% 25% 50% 75% 100% 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Marlowe crossed from boys to girls in 2002, and has stayed there for 22 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 95% girls, which is roughly where it still is.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 34 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
6,467
Estimated living today
5,800
Median age today
7
Peak year
2025
Best rank
523rd
Rank in 2025
523rd
First recorded
1912
Girls / boys
4,805 / 1,662

How old the living Marlowes are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 6,467 babies given the name since 1912, about 5,800 are alive — 89 in every hundred. Roughly 4,700 of them are children and 250 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2018 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 Marlowe is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Marlowe is most concentrated in Colorado (3.0×), Minnesota (2.6×), Washington (2.2×), California (1.9×).

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

Names of 2025

The most popular girls’ names the year Marlowe peaked:

All the names of 2025

Marlowe elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
England and Wales girls Marlowe 580 555th
England and Wales boys Marlowe 290 1,042nd
Scotland girls Marlowe 40 324th
Ireland girls Marlowe 20 727th
Switzerland girls Marlowe 10 1,539th
France boys Marlowe 10 6,287th
France girls Marlowe 5 5,201st
Northern Ireland girls Marlowe 3 397th

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.

Marlowe: births by region

RegionCountry Spelling BirthsShare of the region Best rank
German girls Switzerland Marlowe 3 0.000% 1,389th
French girls Switzerland Marlowe 7 0.002% 689th

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.

Related names

Marlowe against another name

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

Compare Marlowe 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.