Name Awesome

Maire

Girls' name

Possibly to be bitter, through Máire

Maire has been given to 914 babies in the U.S. since 1901. It was used fewer than 5 times in 2025, so it doesn't appear in the latest year's list — today it's a genuinely uncommon pick. Its peak year was 1997, with 26 recorded.

Babies named Maire, 2024

1 in 669,000

Maire over time, 1880–2025

Girls
010203018801900192019401960198020002020

Based on births in the U.S. Babies given the name each year. Hover the chart — or focus it and use the arrow keys — for any year. Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Maire: meaning, origin, and history

Possibly to be bitter, through Máire

Irish

What Maire means

Maire belongs to the name family reached through Maire → Máire → Maria → מרים. Its meaning is “to be bitter”.

Origin, language, and formation

Maire is used in English, Estonian and Finnish. Its origins include Irish.

Maire comes through Irish Máire.

Related names and everyday forms

Related names include Máire, Maria and מרים.

Pronunciation and spelling

In Finnish, Maire is pronounced /ˈmɑi̯re/.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 914 girls were recorded with the name Maire between 1901 and 2024. Its highest annual count was 26 in 1997; its best national rank was #1,841 in 1901.

Sources & methodologyReferences, data & attribution

Meaning, origin, and language notes draw on the references below.

American popularity figures use published Social Security Administration records for this exact spelling. Counts below five for a name, sex, and year are omitted.

Wiktionary material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

How common is Maire?

Maire had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2024, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 2024
1 in 669,000
5 of 3,342,801 births
Among girls only
1 in 324,000
<0.01% of girls
Rank, 2024
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
463,412 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Maire sits on the popularity scale

Rarest published (5 a year)#1 — Olivia (13,544)

Chance at least one other child shares the name

If the other children were drawn at random from the 2024 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.

Class of 20Under 1%
Class of 30Under 1%
Grade of 100Under 1%
School of 500Under 1%

Put another way: gather 463,412 children born in 2024 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Maire. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Maires were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Maire was born before 1986 — so the typical Maire is around 39 today.

Median birth year
1986
About 39 years old
Biggest decade
1990s
18.1% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
27.0%
Spread across generations
Recorded since 1950
716
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1990s — 18.1% of all recorded uses (165).

Is Maire rising or falling?

Rank movement and count movement can disagree — the number of distinct names in use keeps growing, so a name holding a steady count still slides down the list. Both are shown.

Rank vs 1 year ago
—
Not ranked then
Rank vs 5 years ago
New entry
Not ranked then
Rank vs 10 years ago
—
Not ranked then
Births vs 10 years ago
—
Not published both years
Share of its own peak
0%
Peak was 1997 (26)
Years since peak
28
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Shifting
24.5% average annual change
Best rank ever
#1,841
1901

Spellings of Maire

Maire is not the most common spelling — Mary is, with 70.1% against Maire's 0.02%.

Grouped by closeness of spelling (up to two letter changes), same sex, with a floor on all-time use. It catches Sophia/Sofia and Aiden/Ayden, and misses spellings that sound alike but look different, like Sean and Shawn.

Where Maire is used

Across 1910–2025, Maire was most concentrated in Massachusetts — about 1 in — girls, against 1 in 794,003 across all states with data.

00 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1Massachusetts1 in —

Shading is the share of that state's recorded girls given this name, not the raw count — otherwise the map would just show which states are biggest. Unshaded states have no published records for this period. U.S. birth records suppress state-year counts below 5; state counts therefore don't add up to the national total. Every state links to its full rankings. Maire has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.

Maire around the world

Where Maire ranks in official birth records elsewhere in the world. Rankings only — the number of births isn’t comparable between places, so it isn’t shown.

  • England & Wales
    1996–2020
    #5,493
    in 2020
  • Northern Ireland
    2006–2023
    #391
    in 2023
  • Ireland
    1964–2025
    #718
    in 2025
  • France
    1906–2000
    #4,769
    in 2000
  • Canada
    1991–1995
    #2,277
    in 1995
  • South Australia
    1959–2011
    #840
    in 2011

Popularity data from Office for National Statistics, Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, Central Statistics Office, Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques, Statistics Canada and Consumer and Business Services (South Australia). ONS, NISRA data under Open Government Licence v3.0. CSO, CBS SA data under CC BY 4.0. INSEE data under Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0. StatCan data under Statistics Canada Open Licence.

Maire by the numbers

The raw record for each sex the name is used for.

As a girl's name

Rank in 2025
Unranked
Trend vs 5 yrs ago
—
Best rank ever
#1,841
1901
Peak year
1997
26 that year
First recorded
1901
Last recorded
2024
All-time count
914
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Maire

Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.

MaiahMailaMaijaMailyMaizyMaikaMailynMaisonMailiMairinMaiseyMaizeyMailenMaileeMairiMaidaMaisaMaiyahMaileyMaisynMaileMaizeeMaishaMaisy

Sibling names for Maire

Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.

Explore around Maire

Top names of 1997, Maire's peak yearThe 1990s in fullOther names that peaked in 1901Girls' names starting with M