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Marian vs Marie

American parents have registered 542,270 Maries since 1880, against 143,295 Marians. Marie is still ahead, with 474 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Marian 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

Marie has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1954, when Marian had 4,026 and Marie had 5,324.

Side by side

  Marian Marie
Total US births 143,295542,270
Most in one year 4,23512,774
Babies in 2025 217474
Estimated living today 45,000179,000
Median age today 7166
Peak year 19241920
Best rank 64th girls13th girls
Rank in 2025 1,102nd617th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 141,944 / 1,351540,077 / 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 Marians alive today are over 71; half the Maries are over 66. That is 5 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 Marian Marie
France 2,0752,256,975
Belgium 515,104
Norway 88612,308
Ireland 1,8467,780
New Zealand 602,582
England and Wales 3891,845
Scotland 561,927
Switzerland 231,881
Italy 2441,171
Poland 520294

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: Marian and Marie.