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Maddox vs Madeline

American parents have registered 207,630 Madelines since 1880, against 48,944 Maddoxes. Madeline is still ahead, with 3,086 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Maddox against Madeline, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Maddox Madeline

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 146 years in which either name was published, Madeline for 145 years and Maddox for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Maddox Madeline
Total US births 48,944207,630
Most in one year 3,1475,869
Babies in 2025 1,7303,086
Estimated living today 49,000158,000
Median age today 1022
Peak year 20171998
Best rank 136th boys50th girls
Rank in 2025 209th81st
First recorded 19951880
Girls / boys 1,825 / 47,119207,385 / 245

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 Madelines alive today are over 22; half the Maddoxes are over 10. That is 12 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

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

Country Maddox Madeline
England and Wales 2,0836,498
France 254,105
Ireland 18587
Belgium 57393
Scotland 70255
Switzerland 5956
Northern Ireland 4358
Poland 242

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: Maddox and Madeline.