Mel
The boy's name Mel has been in the national records since 1902, with 4,201 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 7,194th. About 2,700 Mels are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 62.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Mel boys named Mel
Girls and boys called Mel
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Mel crossed from boys to girls in 2019, and has stayed there for 5 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 72% girls, and in 2025 it was 59%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 57 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
- 4,201
- Estimated living today
- 2,700
- Median age today
- 62
- Peak year
- 1958
- Best rank
- 688th
- Rank in 2025
- 7,194th
- First recorded
- 1902
- Girls / boys
- 508 / 3,693
How old the living Mels are
born that year still alive today
Of the 4,201 babies given the name since 1902, about 2,700 are alive — 65 in every hundred. Roughly 320 of them are children and 1,200 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1963 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 Mels
- Mel Gibson (born 1956)American actor, director, producer and screenwriter
- Mel Patton (1924–2014)American athletics competitor
- Mel Tormé (1925–1999)American recording artist
- Mel Collins (born 1947)British musician
- Mel Smith (1952–2013)British comedian and actor
- Mel Carnahan (1934–2000)Governor of Missouri, 2000 U.S. senator-elect
- Mel Rodriguez (born 1973)American actor
- Mel Ramos (1935–2018)American artist
People named Mel with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Mel is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Mel is most concentrated in California (3.7×), New York (3.2×), Illinois (2.6×), Ohio (1.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1958
The most popular boys’ names the year Mel peaked:
Mel elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Mel | 425 | 1,289th |
| Ireland boys | Mel | 190 | 129th |
| France girls | Mel | 135 | 2,400th |
| Switzerland girls | Mel | 42 | 893rd |
| Belgium girls | Mel | 20 | 1,383rd |
| England and Wales girls | Mel | 19 | 3,148th |
| Ireland girls | Mel | 10 | 736th |
| England and Wales boys | Mel | 7 | 3,009th |
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.
Mel: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Mel | 17 | 0.001% | 1,164th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Mel | 25 | 0.006% | 430th |
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.
Mel: rank by region
In 2021, Mel was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Mel | 881 | 5 |
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.
Where Mel lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 415 women called Mel were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lleida | Mel | 32 | 0.144 | 620 |
| Girona | Mel | 39 | 0.094 | 849 |
| Barcelona | Mel | 240 | 0.079 | 864 |
| Tarragona | Mel | 27 | 0.062 | 1,149 |
| Balears, Illes | Mel | 18 | 0.029 | 1,902 |
| Castellón/Castelló | Mel | 5 | 0.016 | 2,669 |
Listed in 7 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 45 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
Mel 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.