Mercedes
About 46,575 American babies have been named Mercedes since 1880, most of them around 1991. In 2025 it ranked 1,436th. About 38,000 Mercedeses are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 30.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Mercedes boys named Mercedes
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 46,575
- Estimated living today
- 38,000
- Median age today
- 30
- Peak year
- 1991
- Best rank
- 164th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,436th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 46,206 / 369
How old the living Mercedeses are
born that year still alive today
Of the 46,575 babies given the name since 1880, about 38,000 are alive — 81 in every hundred. Roughly 5,000 of them are children and 2,800 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1995 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 Spanish
From Spanish Mercedes (Mary, Our Lady of Mercy). The car was named for Mercédès Jellinek, the daughter of Austrian businessman Emil Jellinek who ordered 36 cars from Gottlieb Daimler.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Mercedess
- Mercedes Sosa (1935–2009)Argentine singer
- Mercedes McCambridge (1916–2004)American actress
- Mercedes Ruehl (born 1948)American actress
- Mercedes Moné (born 1992)American professional wrestler and actress
- Mercedes of Orléans (1860–1878)Queen consort of Spain
- Mercedes Aráoz (born 1961)Peruvian economist and politician
- Mercedes Mason (born 1983)Swedish-American actress
- Mercédès Jellinek (1889–1929)namesake of Mercedes-Benz
People named Mercedes with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Mercedes is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Mercedes is most concentrated in New Mexico (2.6×), Arizona (2.4×), Texas (1.7×), Louisiana (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1991
The most popular girls’ names the year Mercedes peaked:
Mercedes elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Mercedes +2 spellings | 4,470 | 295th |
| England and Wales girls | Mercedes | 1,347 | 400th |
| Scotland girls | Mercedes | 56 | 336th |
| Poland girls | Mercedes | 54 birth registrations | 393rd |
| Belgium girls | Mercedes | 44 | 699th |
| Ireland girls | Mercedes | 10 | 327th |
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.
Mercedes: rank by region
In 1999, Mercedes was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Mercedes | 578 | 7 |
In 2022, Mercedes was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mazowieckie | Mercedes | 268 | 3 |
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.
Mercedes 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Mercedes | 28 | 238 |
A count of people on a register – 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 Mercedes lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 120,557 women called Mercedes 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cádiz | Mercedes | 6,003 | 9.368 | 20 |
| Sevilla | Mercedes | 8,352 | 8.241 | 22 |
| Jaén | Mercedes | 2,335 | 7.480 | 25 |
| Coruña, A | Mercedes | 3,916 | 6.626 | 24 |
| Pontevedra | Mercedes | 3,196 | 6.516 | 29 |
| Córdoba | Mercedes | 2,573 | 6.510 | 33 |
Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Mercedes 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.