Merlyn
#10,695 in the US in 2025
Merlyn in the United States
Between 2012 and 2025 the name has been rising — up 33% as a share of boys' births.
Merlyn is given to both sexes: 3,410 male and 1,635 female births on record. The two curves rarely move together, which is why they are drawn separately rather than summed.
SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Merlyn in New Zealand
Merlyn never reached 10 births in a single year in New Zealand, so it does not appear in the DIA file. That is a reporting floor, not a zero — the name may still have been registered here, just never ten times in one year.
SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Decade by decade in the US
| Year | Rank | Births |
|---|---|---|
| 1910 | below floor | — |
| 1920 | #826 | 66 |
| 1930 | #508 | 137 |
| 1940 | #631 | 89 |
| 1950 | #1,086 | 42 |
| 1960 | #2,042 | 16 |
| 1970 | #3,521 | 8 |
| 1980 | #3,430 | 12 |
| 1990 | #8,117 | 5 |
| 2000 | #6,316 | 10 |
| 2010 | below floor | — |
| 2020 | #12,022 | 5 |
Where in the United States
The states that registered Merlyn most often since 1908. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.
| State | Births |
|---|---|
| Iowa | 552 |
| Minnesota | 377 |
| Wisconsin | 218 |
| South Dakota | 174 |
| Nebraska | 158 |
| Illinois | 62 |
| Kansas | 47 |
| Michigan | 44 |
| North Dakota | 43 |
| Ohio | 24 |
How these figures are worked out
- Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site.
- Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
- The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
- Each country hides small numbers — the US below 5 births a year, New Zealand below 10. A gap in a line is "below the floor", never "nobody".
SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026