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Marilou

Girls' name

Blend of es:María and es:Lourdes

Marilou has been given to 3,231 babies in the U.S. since 1915. 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 1948, with 90 recorded.

Babies named Marilou, 2024

1 in 418,000

Marilou over time, 1880–2025

Girls
025507510018801900192019401960198020002020

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 Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Marilou: meaning, origin, and history

Blend of es:María and es:Lourdes

French and Spanish

What Marilou means

Marilou is a blend of es:María and es:Lourdes.

Origin, language, and formation

Marilou is used in English, French and Tagalog. Its origins include French and Spanish.

Related names and everyday forms

Related names include Marylou and Maria Lourdes.

Pronunciation and spelling

In French, Marilou is pronounced /ma.ʁi.lu/.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 3,231 girls were recorded with the name Marilou between 1915 and 2024. Its highest annual count was 90 in 1948; its best national rank was #778 in 1933.

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 Marilou?

Marilou 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 418,000
8 of 3,342,801 births
Among girls only
1 in 203,000
<0.01% of girls
Rank, 2024
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
289,633 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Marilou 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 289,633 children born in 2024 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Marilou. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Marilous were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Marilou was born before 1948 — so the typical Marilou is around 77 today.

Median birth year
1948
About 77 years old
Biggest decade
1940s
22.6% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
3.8%
Mostly a past generation
Recorded since 1950
1,444
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1940s — 22.6% of all recorded uses (729).

Is Marilou 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 1948 (90)
Years since peak
77
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Volatile
32.1% average annual change
Best rank ever
#778
1933

Spellings of Marilou

Marilou is not the most common spelling — Marilyn is, with 58.4% against Marilou's 0.50%.

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 Marilou is used

Across 1910–2025, Marilou was most concentrated in Illinois — about 1 in 33,333 girls, against 1 in 78,788 across all states with data. It was least common in Texas (1 in —).

03 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1Illinois1 in 33,333
  2. 2Indiana1 in 33,333
  3. 3Ohio1 in 33,333
  4. 4Michigan1 in 50,000
  5. 5Pennsylvania1 in 50,000
  6. 6Washington1 in 50,000
  7. 7California1 in 100,000
  8. 8New York1 in 100,000

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. Marilou has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.

Marilou around the world

Where Marilou 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.

  • France
    1937–2025
    #644
    in 2025
  • Canada
    1991–2024
    #726
    in 2024
  • South Australia
    1963–1963
    #644
    in 1963

Popularity data from Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques, Statistics Canada and Consumer and Business Services (South Australia). INSEE data under Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0. StatCan data under Statistics Canada Open Licence. CBS SA data under CC BY 4.0.

Notable people named Marilou

People whose public names include Marilou, backed by Wikidata given-name records and ordered by linked Wikimedia pages. The name may be a middle name.

People data from Wikidata (CC0). Fame is measured, not judged — the order reflects how widely each person is documented, not the U.S. birth records popularity this page is otherwise about.

Marilou in other languages

Cross-language forms and variants of Marilou. Linked forms have their own page here.

MariluMarylouMarilùMary Lou

Variant forms from Wikidata (CC0). Most are used mainly outside the United States; U.S. birth records statistics cover US usage only.

Marilou 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
#778
1933
Peak year
1948
90 that year
First recorded
1915
Last recorded
2024
All-time count
3,231
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Marilou

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

MarylouMarylynMaryleeMarlanaMartineMargauxMarleenMarylinMariamaMarloweMariyahMarysolMarlenyMariannMarigoldMarileeMaricruzMarelyMarjoryMariyaMaryannaMarielyMarlinaMarcela

Names with a curve like Marilou

Not spelling — timing. These names rose, peaked and faded in the same years as Marilou, so they read as being from the same moment even when they look nothing alike.

BeverleeEarthaNanciePhylisJoyePhylissCarylThomasineGeorgeneGaynellGeorgineErlinda

Sibling names for Marilou

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 Marilou

Top names of 1948, Marilou's peak yearThe 1940s in fullOther names that peaked in 1933Girls' names starting with MFilipino Girl Names