Madison

360,351 people in America carry this name — ranked #137 of 923.

Most Americans carrying it were born this century.

Say it MA duh suhn

3 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

M AE1 D AH0 S AH0 N — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 360,351 2020 Census
  • Rank #137 Common
  • Per 100,000 119.3 about 1 in 920 people

Where Madison comes from and what it means

Reads literally as “the son of Mathew or Matilda”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

Madison name popularity by year

401,087 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 2001, with 22,292 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 00s 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 2000s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

What goes well after Madison

Three syllables already, so a short middle name keeps the whole from running long.

Better avoided

  • Madison Mary — same opening
  • Madison Nancy — runs together
  • Madison Michelle — same opening

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

Is Madison used for boys or for girls?

1.3% men
355,609 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Where in America Madison is thickest on the ground

In Nevada the name is given 1.5 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Nevada ×1.5
  • New Hampshire ×1.5
  • Delaware ×1.5
  • Montana ×1.4
  • Arkansas ×1.4

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

The likeliest full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

How to spell Madison

Madison is how 67% of them spell it — 541,024 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Same syllables and stress as Madison

Nothing else in the file ends on the same sound — a rare thing, and useful if you want a first name nobody will echo.

Same rhythm — 3 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 75.6%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 7.7%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 9.1%
  • Two or more races — 5.2%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 1.7%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.7%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Try it Full-Name Estimator

Add a surname and see how many Americans carry the two together.

Open Full-Name Estimator on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers