Mercedes

62,850 people in America carry this name — ranked #783 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it mur SAY deez

3 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

M ER0 S EY1 D IY0 Z — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 62,850 2020 Census
  • Per 100,000 20.8 about 1 in 5,274 people

Where Mercedes comes from and what it means

Latin in origin, reading literally as “favours”.

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.

Mercedes through the years

45,708 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1991, with 1,807 of them.

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

Most people carrying it were born in the 1990s. 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 Mercedes

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

Better avoided

  • Mercedes Mary — same opening
  • Mercedes Susan — runs together
  • Mercedes Sarah — 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.

Going quiet

Mercedes has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to the Millennials.

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

1.1% men
62,176 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.

Same syllables and stress as Mercedes

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 second

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

How to spell Mercedes

Mercedes is how 48% of them spell it — 132,065 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.

Who has this name today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 17.6%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 10.1%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 66.0%
  • Two or more races — 2.6%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 3.1%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.6%

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.

This name in other languages

  • Mercede Italian

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.

The states where Mercedes is most common

In New Mexico the name is given 2.2 times as often as it is across the country.

  • New Mexico ×2.2
  • Arizona ×1.8
  • Utah ×1.6
  • Idaho ×1.5
  • Texas ×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.

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
Other names of Latin origin