Martin

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Martin boys named Martin

By the numbers

Total US births

317,037

Estimated living today

200,000

Median age today

53

Peak year

1963

Best rank

62nd

Rank in 2025

335th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

1,476 / 315,561

How old the living Martins are

born that year still alive today

Of the 317,037 babies given the name since 1880, about 200,000 are alive — 63 in every hundred. Roughly 23,000 of them are children and 57,000 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.

Where the name comes from

Origin Latin

From Middle English Martin, from Latin Mārtīnus (“of or like Mars” or “little Mars”). See Mārs for further etymology.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Martins

• Martin Luther (1483–1546)German priest and theologian
• Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968)American Baptist minister and civil rights leader
• Martin Heidegger (1889–1976)German philosopher
• Martin Van Buren (1782–1862)president of the United States from 1837 to 1841
• Martin Scorsese (born 1942)American filmmaker
• Martin Landau (1928–2017)American actor
• Martin of Tours (316–397)Christian saint
• Martin V (1368–1431)pope of the Catholic Church from 1417 to 1431

People named Martin with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Martin is most common

• CA41,009
• NY40,263
• TX28,398
• IL19,924
• PA19,374
• OH12,915
• MI12,495
• NJ10,393
• MA7,070
• FL6,704

Relative to how many babies each state records, Martin is most concentrated in New Mexico (2.0×), New York (1.7×), Arizona (1.5×), California (1.3×).

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

Names of 1963

The most popular boys’ names the year Martin peaked:

• Michael
• John
• David
• James
• Robert
• Mark

All the names of 1963

Martin elsewhere

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.

Martin: births by region

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, Martin is most concentrated in Fribourg, where 0.27% of children were given it – 183 of them.

Martin: rank by region

In 2025, Martin was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.

In 2024, Martin was among the 10 most common names in 16 regions of Spain. It has come first somewhere in 10 different years.

In 2024, Martin was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

In 2025, Martin was given 2 times or more in 8 regions of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Martin appears in the lists for Province of Liège (42nd), Province of Namur (42nd), Province of Walloon Brabant (48th), Province of Hainaut (57th) and Brussels-Capital Region (187th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Spain after 10 names, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 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.

Martin by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Martin 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.

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 Martin lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 79,496 men called Martin were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Men: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Mary
• Mark
• Margaret
• Maria
• Martha
• Marie
• Marilyn
• Marjorie
• Marion
• Marvin
• Marcus
• Mario

Martin against another name

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

• Martin vs Mary
• Martin vs Mark
• Martin vs Margaret
• Martin vs Maria
• Martin vs Martha
• Martin vs Marie

Compare Martin with a name of your own