Merle
Merle reached its high-water mark in 1925 at number 175, and has been recorded 45,389 times in all. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 3,450th. About 11,000 Merles are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 72.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Merle boys named Merle
Girls and boys called Merle
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Merle crossed from girls to boys in 1912, having already crossed in 1888, and has stayed there for 95 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 100% boys, and in 2025 it was 87%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 124 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
- 45,389
- Estimated living today
- 11,000
- Median age today
- 72
- Peak year
- 1925
- Best rank
- 175th
- Rank in 2025
- 3,450th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 14,723 / 30,666
How old the living Merles are
born that year still alive today
Of the 45,389 babies given the name since 1880, about 11,000 are alive — 25 in every hundred. Roughly 400 of them are children and 7,800 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1953 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 a surname
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Merles
- Merle Haggard (1937–2016)American country music songwriter, singer, and musician
- Merle Travis (1917–1983)American country/Western singer-songwriter and musician
People named Merle with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Merle is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Merle is most concentrated in South Dakota (6.9×), Iowa (5.6×), Nebraska (4.7×), Kansas (4.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1925
The most popular boys’ names the year Merle peaked:
Merle elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Denmark girls | Merle | 1,511 | 34th |
| Switzerland girls | Merle | 102 | 587th |
| Belgium girls | Merle | 86 | 819th |
| England and Wales girls | Merle | 56 | 2,301st |
| Scotland girls | Merle | 3 | 537th |
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.
Merle: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Merle | 100 | 0.008% | 424th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Merle | 1 | 0.000% | 873rd |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Merle | 1 | 0.002% | 164th |
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, Merle is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.01% of children were given it – 45 of them.
Merle: rank by region
In 2015, Merle was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Merle | 836 | 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.
Merle by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 389 | 51st |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Merle 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 girls | Merle | 2,498 | 2,864 |
| Finland girls | Merle | 62 | 71 |
| the Netherlands boys | Merle | 6 | 20 |
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.
Related names
Merle 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.