Mervyn
Mervyn is a boy's name that peaked in 1937, when it was the 824th most popular in the United States. It has not appeared in the national data since 2016. About 520 Mervyns are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 64.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Mervyn boys named Mervyn
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,586
- Estimated living today
- 520
- Median age today
- 64
- Peak year
- 1937
- Best rank
- 824th
- Rank in 2025
- unranked
- First recorded
- 1905
- Girls / boys
- 5 / 1,581
How old the living Mervyns are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,586 babies given the name since 1905, about 520 are alive — 33 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1961 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 Welsh
probably from mer (“marrow”) (from cel-bry-pro *mer) + myn (“eminent”) (compare Irish mín).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Mervyns
- Mervyn LeRoy (1900–1987)American film director and producer
- Mervyn Peake (1911–1968)English author and illustrator
- Mervyn Rose (1930–2017)Australian tennis player
- Mervyn Wood (1917–2006)Australian rower
- Mervyn King (born 1948)British economist
- Mervyn Crossman (1935–2017)field hockey player
- Mervyn Finlay (1925–2014)Australian judge and rower
- Mervyn Johns (1899–1992)Welsh actor
People named Mervyn with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Mervyn is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Mervyn is most concentrated in California (7.6×), New York (2.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1937
The most popular boys’ names the year Mervyn peaked:
Mervyn elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland boys | Mervyn | 230 | 150th |
| New Zealand boys | Mervyn | 162 | 85th |
| France boys | Mervyn | 50 | 958th |
| England and Wales boys | Mervyn | 47 | 2,544th |
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.
Related names
Mervyn 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.