Humanverse

Marisa vs Marissa

American parents have registered 121,112 Marissas since 1880, against 48,773 Marisas. Marissa is still ahead, with 123 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Marisa against Marissa, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Marisa Marissa

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 85 years in which either name was published, Marissa for 49 years and Marisa for 36 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Marisa Marissa
Total US births 48,773121,112
Most in one year 2,1986,260
Babies in 2025 25123
Estimated living today 47,000119,000
Median age today 3429
Peak year 19951994
Best rank 147th girls53rd girls
Rank in 2025 5,099th1,673rd
First recorded 19341936
Girls / boys 48,707 / 66120,842 / 270

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 Marisas alive today are over 34; half the Marissas are over 29. 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 Marisa Marissa
France 900930
England and Wales 6011,086
Italy 992446
Scotland 196309
Belgium 15256
Ireland 99130
Poland 6012

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: Marisa and Marissa.