Humanverse

Mariah vs Marie

American parents have registered 542,270 Maries since 1880, against 115,279 Mariahs. But in 2025 it was Mariah that was commoner, 693 babies to 474.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Mariah against Marie, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Mariah Marie

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, Marie for 111 years and Mariah for 35 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Mariah Marie
Total US births 115,279542,270
Most in one year 5,45412,774
Babies in 2025 693474
Estimated living today 112,000179,000
Median age today 2466
Peak year 19961920
Best rank 63rd girls13th girls
Rank in 2025 447th617th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 115,096 / 183540,077 / 2,193

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 Maries alive today are over 66; half the Mariahs are over 24. That is 42 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 Mariah Marie
France 3052,256,975
Ireland 637,780
England and Wales 1,3101,845
Scotland 171,927
Northern Ireland 1663

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: Mariah and Marie.