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Maximillian vs Maxwell

American parents have registered 109,467 Maxwells since 1880, against 5,968 Maximillians. Maxwell is still ahead, with 1,939 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Maximillian Maxwell

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

Maxwell 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 1971, when Maximillian had 26 and Maxwell had 56.

Side by side

  Maximillian Maxwell
Total US births 5,968109,467
Most in one year 2503,773
Babies in 2025 861,939
Estimated living today 5,800103,000
Median age today 2317
Peak year 19992014
Best rank 675th boys107th boys
Rank in 2025 1,837th189th
First recorded 19141880
Girls / boys 0 / 5,968735 / 108,732

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 Maximillians alive today are over 23; half the Maxwells are over 17. That is 6 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 Maximillian Maxwell
England and Wales 1,90010,280
Scotland 44707
France 15290
Ireland 60169
Poland 14052

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: Maximillian and Maxwell.