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Mena vs Menachem

American parents have registered 7,063 Menachems since 1880, against 1,678 Menas. Menachem is still ahead, with 198 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Mena against Menachem, 1880 to 2025 0 60 120 180 240 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Mena Menachem

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 111 years in which either name was published, Menachem for 70 years and Mena for 41 years. The lead changed hands 7 times.

Side by side

  Mena Menachem
Total US births 1,6787,063
Most in one year 72214
Babies in 2025 19198
Estimated living today 1,4006,900
Median age today 1917
Peak year 20082024
Best rank 2,773rd girls1,038th boys
Rank in 2025 6,116th1,084th
First recorded 18801948
Girls / boys 1,517 / 1610 / 7,063

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 Menas alive today are over 19; half the Menachems 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 Mena Menachem
England and Wales 127328
Switzerland 11939
France 5070

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: Mena and Menachem.