Merly
Girls' nameMeaning not yet documented
Merly has been given to 242 babies in the U.S. since 1986. 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 2012, with 14 recorded.
Babies named Merly, 2024
1 in 418,000
Merly 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 Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.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 Merly?
Merly 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 Merly 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 289,633 children born in 2024 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Merly. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.
When Merlys were born
Half of everyone ever recorded as Merly was born before 2008 — so the typical Merly is around 17 today.
- Biggest decade
- 2000s
- 33.9% of all use
- Born in the last 25 years
- 78.1%
- A modern name
- Recorded since 1950
- 242
- People you could plausibly meet
2000s — 33.9% of all recorded uses (82).
Is Merly 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 2012 (14)
- Years since peak
- 13
- Years
- Year-to-year steadiness
- Volatile
- 36.1% average annual change
Spellings of Merly
Merly is not the most common spelling — Mary is, with 75.8% against Merly'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 Merly is used
Across 1910–2025, Merly was most concentrated in California — about 1 in — girls, against 1 in 1,455,707 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. Merly has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.
Merly by the numbers
The raw record for each sex the name is used for.
Names similar to Merly
Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.
Sibling names for Merly
Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.