Humanverse

Megan vs Mehgan

American parents have registered 441,169 Megans since 1880, against 543 Mehgans. Megan is still ahead, with 301 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Megan against Mehgan, 1880 to 2025 0 6k 12k 18k 24k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Megan Mehgan

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

Megan has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1922 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2012, when Megan had 1,561 and Mehgan had 6.

Side by side

  Megan Mehgan
Total US births 441,169543
Most in one year 20,30336
Babies in 2025 301under 5
Estimated living today 429,000530
Median age today 3436
Peak year 19901986
Best rank 11th girls2,682nd girls
Rank in 2025 887thunranked
First recorded 19221976
Girls / boys 440,065 / 1,104543 / 0

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 Mehgans alive today are over 36; half the Megans are over 34. 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 Megan Mehgan
England and Wales 70,9288

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: Megan and Mehgan.