Merritt
#1,499 in the US in 2025
Merritt in the United States
Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been rising — up 67% as a share of boys' births.
Merritt is given to both sexes: 6,151 male and 3,231 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
Merritt in New Zealand
Merritt 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 1880 | #403 | 18 |
| 1890 | #566 | 12 |
| 1900 | #1,050 | 7 |
| 1910 | #822 | 14 |
| 1920 | #609 | 107 |
| 1930 | #730 | 75 |
| 1940 | #862 | 53 |
| 1950 | #973 | 51 |
| 1960 | #1,273 | 38 |
| 1970 | #1,615 | 28 |
| 1980 | #2,617 | 18 |
| 1990 | #3,607 | 16 |
| 2000 | #3,423 | 24 |
| 2010 | #3,128 | 36 |
| 2020 | #1,849 | 80 |
Where in the United States
The states that registered Merritt most often since 1880. 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 |
|---|---|
| New York | 366 |
| Pennsylvania | 224 |
| California | 155 |
| Texas | 128 |
| Indiana | 99 |
| Illinois | 93 |
| Michigan | 90 |
| Ohio | 88 |
| Iowa | 70 |
| North Carolina | 68 |
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