Merina
Girls' nameMeaning not yet documented
Merina has been given to 338 babies in the U.S. since 1965. 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 1998, with 19 recorded.
Babies named Merina, 2024
1 in 557,000
Merina over time, 1880–2025
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 Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.
How common is Merina?
Merina 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 557,000
- 6 of 3,342,801 births
- Among girls only
- 1 in 270,000
- <0.01% of girls
- Rank, 2024
- Unranked
- Fewer than 5 uses
- Coin-flip room size
- 386,177 kids
- Even odds of a second one
Where Merina sits on the popularity scale
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.
Put another way: gather 386,177 children born in 2024 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Merina. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.
When Merinas were born
Half of everyone ever recorded as Merina was born before 1998 — so the typical Merina is around 27 today.
- Biggest decade
- 1990s
- 43.2% of all use
- Born in the last 25 years
- 43.5%
- Spread across generations
- Recorded since 1950
- 338
- People you could plausibly meet
1990s — 43.2% of all recorded uses (146).
Is Merina 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 1998 (19)
- Years since peak
- 27
- Years
- Year-to-year steadiness
- Volatile
- 25.6% average annual change
Spellings of Merina
Merina is not the most common spelling — Maria is, with 24.7% against Merina's 0.01%.
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 Merina is used
Across 1910–2025, Merina was most concentrated in California — about 1 in — girls, against 1 in 500,399 across all states with data.
Most concentrated
- 1California1 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. Merina has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.
Merina around the world
Where Merina 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 & Wales2016–2025#4,867in 2025
- France1913–2022#7,445in 2022
- Canada1998–2024#3,457in 2024
- South Australia1961–2012#871in 2012
Popularity data from Office for National Statistics, Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques, Statistics Canada and Consumer and Business Services (South Australia). ONS data under Open Government Licence v3.0. INSEE data under Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0. StatCan data under Statistics Canada Open Licence. CBS SA data under CC BY 4.0.
Merina by the numbers
The raw record for each sex the name is used for.
Names similar to Merina
Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.
Sibling names for Merina
Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.