Marcos

71,178 people in America carry this name — ranked #720 of 923.

Most Americans carrying it were born this century.

Say it MAHR kohs

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

M AA1 R K OW0 S — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 71,178 2020 Census
  • Rank #720 Familiar
  • Per 100,000 23.6 about 1 in 4,657 people
  • As a surname 5,263 ranked #6,234 the other way round

The meaning and origin of Marcos

Latin in origin, reading literally as “of Mars”.

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.

Marcos name popularity by year

50,644 babies were given this name since 1888. The busiest year was 2001, with 1,415 of them.

80 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 that fit Marcos

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

Better avoided

  • Marcos Michael — same opening
  • Marcos Matthew — same opening
  • Marcos Mark — 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.

Boys or girls: who is called Marcos?

99.6% men
262 women

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

The most common 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.

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 6.0%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 1.2%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 91.4%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 0.8%

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.

Where in America Marcos is thickest on the ground

In New Mexico the name is given 5.1 times as often as it is across the country.

  • New Mexico ×5.1
  • Arizona ×3.0
  • California ×2.4
  • Texas ×2.4
  • Nevada ×2.0

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.

How Marcos is spelled

Marcos is how 3.8% of them spell it — 1,865,673 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.

Try it Birth Plan Worksheet

Tick what matters, print it, hand it over. Nothing is stored anywhere.

Open Birth Plan Worksheet 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
Other names of Latin origin