Maggie

72,613 people in America carry this name — ranked #705 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it MA gee

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

M AE1 G IY2 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 72,613 2020 Census
  • Rank #705 Familiar
  • Per 100,000 24.0 about 1 in 4,565 people
  • As a surname 139 ranked #128,411 the other way round

The meaning and origin of Maggie

Greek in origin, reading literally as “pearl”.

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.

Maggie name popularity by year

118,052 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 2007, with 1,873 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.

Middle names for Maggie

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Maggie Mary — same opening
  • Maggie Maria — same opening
  • Maggie Elizabeth — runs together

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.

What Maggie is short for

Maggie is a short form of Margaret.

Short forms as recorded in a 19th-century glossary of Christian names, so the list is old rather than complete.

Never out of use

Maggie has been given in every decade on record — no fashion lifted it and none has dropped it.

Is Maggie a boy's or a girl's name?

0.2% men
72,454 women

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

The same name elsewhere

  • Meg English
  • May Scottish
  • Mai Esth
  • Mag English
  • Rita Italian
  • Reta Finn
  • Mete German
  • Kret Esth
  • Grel Bav
  • Gogo French
  • Peggy English
  • Mysic Scottish
  • Moggy English
  • Mette Danish

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

Where in America Maggie is thickest on the ground

In Mississippi the name is given 2.0 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Mississippi ×2.0
  • Tennessee ×1.9
  • Nebraska ×1.8
  • Arkansas ×1.8
  • Alabama ×1.8

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.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Try it Birth Plan Worksheet

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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
Other names of Greek origin