Mary
About 4,156,654 American babies have been named Mary since 1880, most of them around 1921. In 2025 it ranked 125th. About 1.7 million Marys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 69.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Mary boys named Mary
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 4,156,654
- Estimated living today
- 1.7 million
- Median age today
- 69
- Peak year
- 1921
- Best rank
- 1st
- Rank in 2025
- 125th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 4,141,481 / 15,173
How old the living Marys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 4,156,654 babies given the name since 1880, about 1.7 million are alive — 41 in every hundred. Roughly 45,000 of them are children and 1.1 million are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1956 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 Aramaic, Hebrew
From Middle English Marie, from Old French Marie, from Latin Maria, from Ancient Greek Μαρία, Μαριάμ, from Aramaic מַרְיָם or Biblical Hebrew מִרְיָם, of uncertain meaning (see the Hebrew entry for more).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Marys
- Mary Shelley (1797–1851)English writer
- Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)English writer and intellectual
- Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–1587)Queen of Scotland from 1542 to 1567
- Mary I (1516–1558)Queen of England and Ireland from 1553 to 1558
- Mary Pickford (1892–1979)Canadian actress and producer
- Mary Cassatt (1844–1926)American painter and printmaker
- Mary Robinson (born 1944)former President of Ireland and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
- Mary II of England (1662–1695)Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1689 to 1694
People named Mary with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Mary is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Mary is most concentrated in Mississippi (1.8×), Alabama (1.7×), West Virginia (1.7×), Kentucky (1.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1921
The most popular girls’ names the year Mary peaked:
Mary elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland girls | Mary | 42,871 | 1st |
| England and Wales girls | Mary | 7,334 | 118th |
| France girls | Mary | 5,920 | 385th |
| New Zealand girls | Mary | 5,891 | 6th |
| Scotland girls | Mary | 2,687 | 50th |
| Norway girls | Mary | 2,445 | 59th |
| France boys | Mary | 1,010 | 220th |
| Italy girls | Mary | 837 | — |
| Northern Ireland girls | Mary | 598 | 53rd |
| Belgium girls | Mary | 163 | 572nd |
| Switzerland girls | Mary | 129 | 577th |
| Poland girls | Mary | 30 birth registrations | 443rd |
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.
Mary: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Mary | 100 | 0.008% | 538th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Mary | 25 | 0.006% | 336th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Mary | 4 | 0.006% | 170th |
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, Mary is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.01% of children were given it – 42 of them.
Mary: rank by region
In 2012, Mary was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Mary | 874 | 5 |
In 2019, Mary was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mazowieckie | Mary | 271 | 2 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, 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.
Mary by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 2 | 544th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Mary 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 girls | Mary | 2,224 | 4,630 |
| Finland girls | Mary | 405 | 808 |
| the Netherlands boys | Mary | 20 | 144 |
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 Mary lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 1,121 women called Mary were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Melilla | Mary | 9 | 0.208 | 593 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Mary | 105 | 0.102 | 792 |
| Almería | Mary | 33 | 0.087 | 873 |
| Málaga | Mary | 78 | 0.085 | 816 |
| Murcia | Mary | 63 | 0.080 | 829 |
| Lleida | Mary | 16 | 0.072 | 989 |
Listed in 34 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 18 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
Mary 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.