Marcel
About 21,123 American babies have been named Marcel since 1881, most of them around 2022. In 2025 it ranked 730th. About 17,000 Marcels are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 29.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Marcel boys named Marcel
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 21,123
- Estimated living today
- 17,000
- Median age today
- 29
- Peak year
- 2022
- Best rank
- 659th
- Rank in 2025
- 730th
- First recorded
- 1881
- Girls / boys
- 992 / 20,131
How old the living Marcels are
born that year still alive today
Of the 21,123 babies given the name since 1881, about 17,000 are alive — 79 in every hundred. Roughly 5,600 of them are children and 1,500 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1996 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin French
Borrowed from French Marcel, from Latin Marcellus, diminutive of Marcus.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Marcels
- Marcel Proust (1871–1922)French novelist, critic and essayist
- Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968)French painter, sculptor, and chess player
- Marcel Pagnol (1895–1974)novelist, playwright and filmmaker from France
- Marcel Desailly (born 1968)French footballer
- Marcel Marceau (1923–2007)French actor and mime artist
- Marcel Achard (1899–1974)French writer
- Marcel Mauss (1872–1950)French sociologist and anthropologist
- Marcel Schmelzer (born 1988)German footballer
People named Marcel with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Marcel is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Marcel is most concentrated in Vermont (7.5×), Maine (7.2×), Rhode Island (6.3×), New Hampshire (5.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2022
The most popular boys’ names the year Marcel peaked:
Marcel elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Marcel | 471,230 | 5th |
| Poland boys | Marcel | 77,042 birth registrations | 13th |
| Austria boys | Marcel | 12,593 | 9th |
| England and Wales boys | Marcel | 3,489 | 223rd |
| Belgium boys | Marcel | 2,340 | 35th |
| Switzerland boys | Marcel | 805 | 134th |
| Norway boys | Marcel | 588 | 218th |
| Ireland boys | Marcel | 507 | 150th |
| Italy boys | Marcel | 328 | — |
| Scotland boys | Marcel | 298 | 210th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Marcel | 77 | 234th |
| France girls | Marcel | 55 | 1,204th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Marcel: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Marcel | 615 | 0.049% | 100th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Marcel | 180 | 0.041% | 115th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Marcel | 8 | 0.012% | 96th |
| Romansh boys | Switzerland | Marcel | 2 | 0.054% | 18th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Marcel is most concentrated in Lucerne, where 0.09% of children were given it – 78 of them.
Marcel: rank by region
In 2025, Marcel was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Marcel | 21 | 135 |
| Wallonia | Marcel | 140 | 21 |
In 2024, Marcel was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Marcel | 7 | 2 |
In 2025, Marcel was given 2 times or more in 16 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dolnośląskie | Marcel | 20 | 129 |
| Kujawsko-Pomorskie | Marcel | 17 | 116 |
| Lubelskie | Marcel | 12 | 143 |
| Lubuskie | Marcel | 16 | 49 |
| Łódzkie | Marcel | 17 | 143 |
| Małopolskie | Marcel | 19 | 249 |
| Mazowieckie | Marcel | 16 | 380 |
| Opolskie | Marcel | 18 | 45 |
| Podkarpackie | Marcel | 27 | 78 |
| Podlaskie | Marcel | 11 | 100 |
| Pomorskie | Marcel | 12 | 168 |
| Śląskie | Marcel | 21 | 173 |
| Świętokrzyskie | Marcel | 15 | 66 |
| Warmińsko-Mazurskie | Marcel | 11 | 98 |
| Wielkopolskie | Marcel | 14 | 237 |
| Zachodniopomorskie | Marcel | 17 | 78 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Marcel appears in the lists for Province of West Flanders (13th), Province of East Flanders (17th), Province of Flemish Brabant (35th), Province of Antwerp (45th), Province of Limburg (51st), Province of Hainaut (117th) and Province of Liège (147th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Marcel by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 68 | 226th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Marcel among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Marcel | 35,780 | 45,331 |
| the Netherlands girls | Marcel | — | 318 |
| Finland boys | Marcel | 75 | 172 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Marcel lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 6,147 men called Marcel were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lleida | Marcel | 338 | 1.436 | 115 |
| Tarragona | Marcel | 468 | 1.068 | 152 |
| Girona | Marcel | 444 | 1.066 | 137 |
| Barcelona | Marcel | 3,022 | 1.036 | 146 |
| Balears, Illes | Marcel | 193 | 0.310 | 297 |
| Castellón/Castelló | Marcel | 94 | 0.301 | 325 |
Listed in 44 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 8 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Marcel against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.