Humanverse

Madalynne vs Maddison

American parents have registered 24,116 Maddisons since 1880, against 706 Madalynnes. Maddison is still ahead, with 703 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Madalynne against Maddison, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Madalynne Maddison

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 46 years in which either name was published, Maddison for 41 years and Madalynne for 5 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Madalynne Maddison
Total US births 70624,116
Most in one year 411,167
Babies in 2025 11703
Estimated living today 61024,000
Median age today 1714
Peak year 20082009
Best rank 3,859th girls281st girls
Rank in 2025 8,860th438th
First recorded 19201985
Girls / boys 706 / 024,063 / 53

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Madalynnes alive today are over 17; half the Maddisons are over 14. That is 3 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Madalynne Maddison
England and Wales 315,272

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Madalynne and Maddison.