Max
Max reached its high-water mark in 2009 at number 104, and has been recorded 168,577 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 180th. About 120,000 Maxes are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 19.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Max boys named Max
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 168,577
- Estimated living today
- 120,000
- Median age today
- 19
- Peak year
- 2009
- Best rank
- 104th
- Rank in 2025
- 180th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 1,119 / 167,458
How old the living Maxes are
born that year still alive today
Of the 168,577 babies given the name since 1880, about 120,000 are alive — 71 in every hundred. Roughly 55,000 of them are children and 11,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2006 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
diminutive of Maximilian in the 19th century, later also used as a nickname for Maxwell.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Maxs
- Max Planck (1858–1947)German theoretical physicist
- Max Weber (1864–1920)German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist
- Max Born (1882–1970)German-Jewish physicist and mathematician
- Max von Laue (1879–1960)German physicist, Nobel laureate and anti-Nazi
- Max Stirner (1806–1856)German philosopher
- Max Euwe (1901–1981)Dutch chess player and mathematician
- Max Frisch (1911–1991)Swiss playwrighter and novelist
- Max Ernst (1891–1976)German artist
People named Max with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Max is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Max is most concentrated in Utah (3.0×), Idaho (2.3×), Kansas (2.1×), Indiana (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2009
The most popular boys’ names the year Max peaked:
Max elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Max | 60,868 | 18th |
| France boys | Max | 40,300 | 62nd |
| Sweden boys | Max | 10,579 | 19th |
| Scotland boys | Max | 5,238 | 11th |
| New Zealand boys | Max | 4,762 | 18th |
| Ireland boys | Max | 3,871 | 34th |
| Austria boys | Max | 3,415 | 40th |
| Norway boys | Max | 2,747 | 60th |
| Belgium boys | Max | 2,651 | 89th |
| Switzerland boys | Max | 2,585 | 44th |
| Poland boys | Max | 1,867 birth registrations | 120th |
| Spain boys | Max | 1,620 | 91st |
| Northern Ireland boys | Max | 1,528 | 26th |
| Italy boys | Max | 1,147 | — |
| France girls | Max | 320 | 1,207th |
| Belgium girls | Max | 29 | 863rd |
| England and Wales girls | Max | 23 | 3,148th |
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.
Max: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Max | 2,141 | 0.172% | 39th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Max | 424 | 0.097% | 76th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Max | 18 | 0.028% | 116th |
| Romansh boys | Switzerland | Max | 2 | 0.054% | 22nd |
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, Max is most concentrated in Zug, where 0.24% of children were given it – 65 of them.
Max: rank by region
In 2025, Max was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Max | 44 | 98 |
| Brussels | Max | 187 | 7 |
In 2024, Max was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Provincia Autonoma di Bolzano | Max | 9 | 29 |
In 2025, Max was given 2 times or more in 12 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dolnośląskie | Max | 157 | 6 |
| Kujawsko-Pomorskie | Max | 122 | 4 |
| Lubelskie | Max | 125 | 3 |
| Łódzkie | Max | 183 | 2 |
| Małopolskie | Max | 135 | 8 |
| Mazowieckie | Max | 154 | 12 |
| Opolskie | Max | 108 | 3 |
| Pomorskie | Max | 113 | 10 |
| Śląskie | Max | 155 | 6 |
| Warmińsko-Mazurskie | Max | 103 | 4 |
| Wielkopolskie | Max | 136 | 9 |
| Zachodniopomorskie | Max | 168 | 2 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Max appears in the lists for Province of East Flanders (37th), Province of Flemish Brabant (42nd), Province of Antwerp (48th), Province of Limburg (60th), Province of West Flanders (64th) and Brussels-Capital Region (187th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, 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.
Max by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 608 | 30th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Max 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 boys | Max | 18,477 | 20,960 |
| Finland boys | Max | 4,883 | 5,762 |
| the Netherlands girls | Max | 59 | 101 |
| Finland girls | Max | 32 | 36 |
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 Max lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 6,686 men called Max 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
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barcelona | Max | 4,130 | 1.416 | 115 |
| Girona | Max | 580 | 1.393 | 116 |
| Lleida | Max | 178 | 0.756 | 178 |
| Tarragona | Max | 282 | 0.643 | 205 |
| Balears, Illes | Max | 248 | 0.398 | 241 |
| Castellón/Castelló | Max | 52 | 0.167 | 516 |
Listed in 34 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 18 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
Max 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.