Humanverse

Margot vs Mary

American parents have registered 4,156,654 Marys since 1880, against 25,568 Margots. But in 2025 it was Margot that was commoner, 2,575 babies to 2,230.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Margot against Mary, 1880 to 2025 0 20k 40k 60k 80k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Margot Mary

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, Mary for 144 years and Margot for 2 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Margot Mary
Total US births 25,5684,156,654
Most in one year 2,57574,171
Babies in 2025 2,5752,230
Estimated living today 23,0001.7 million
Median age today 669
Peak year 20251921
Best rank 102nd girls1st girls
Rank in 2025 102nd125th
First recorded 18941880
Girls / boys 25,568 / 04,141,481 / 15,173

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 Marys alive today are over 69; half the Margots are over 6. That is 63 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 Margot Mary
France 51,1306,930
Ireland 20542,871
England and Wales 8,3467,334
New Zealand 2465,891
Belgium 4,175163
Scotland 2512,687
Norway 4052,445
Italy 1,641837
Northern Ireland 157598
Switzerland 616129
Poland 2030

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: Margot and Mary.