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Max vs Maxime

American parents have registered 168,577 Maxes since 1880, against 1,153 Maximes. Max is still ahead, with 2,066 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Max against Maxime, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Max Maxime

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

Max 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 1982, when Max had 462 and Maxime had 9.

Side by side

  Max Maxime
Total US births 168,5771,153
Most in one year 3,96947
Babies in 2025 2,06621
Estimated living today 120,0001,100
Median age today 1917
Peak year 20092001
Best rank 104th boys2,429th boys
Rank in 2025 180th4,707th
First recorded 18801920
Girls / boys 1,119 / 167,45855 / 1,098

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 Maxes alive today are over 19; half the Maximes are over 17. That is 2 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 Max Maxime
France 40,620226,120
England and Wales 60,891542
Belgium 2,68011,898
Scotland 5,2383
Switzerland 2,5852,622
Ireland 3,87119
Poland 1,867180

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: Max and Maxime.