Mamie
Feminine · “bitter”
Mamie is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 77,907 girls against 278 boys since 1880.
Mamie is a nursery name that grew up. It began as what a small child makes of Mary or Margaret, and nineteenth-century America wrote it down often enough that it became a name on its own — in the national top sixty in the 1880s.
How old is the name Mamie?
Mamie was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Mamie alive today was born around 1918, making them about 107 years old. About 13,000 people named Mamie are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Mamie most popular?
Mamie peaked in 1888, reaching #53 nationally. Today it ranks #6116, 6,063 places below that high. See the whole 1888 chart.
Mamie appears on this list:
Where it comes from
From Miryam to Mamie
The story of Mamie
Mary was so overwhelmingly common in the English-speaking world for so long that families needed a way to distinguish one from another inside a single household, and the nursery supplied it: Molly, Polly, May, Mollie, Mamie. Each of these began as an affectionate or a childish version and several became legal names in their own right during the nineteenth century. Mamie is one of them, and it stayed in ordinary American use for two generations after that.
Meaningscholars disagree
bitter; beloved; sea
As a form of Mary, it inherits one of the most argued-over etymologies in the field: the Hebrew Miryam has been read as 'bitter', as 'beloved', as 'rebellious' and as containing an Egyptian element meaning beloved, and none is settled. Read instead as a form of Margaret, the meaning is the Greek margarites, 'pearl', which is settled.
How the name formed
- Miryam
- Maria
- Mary
- Mamie
Related forms: Máire · Marie · María
Pronouncing Mamie
MAY-mee
Two syllables, stress on the first, the first vowel long as in 'name'.
Nicknames for Mamie
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1880
- Most girls named
- 19181,708 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #53reached in 1888
- Change vs 2022
- −9.5%19 in 2025, from 21
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Mamie in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Máire in Irish — related form
- Marie in French — related form
- María in Spanish — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Mississippi.
Mamies among us
people named Mamie are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 84,593 born in 2025 was named Mamie
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
Fashion outlook
Mamie sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Mamie beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Mamie in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Mary or Margaret can stand behind it, both of them among the most-used names in European history.
- Warm and soft-sounding, with no hard consonants anywhere in it.
- It is genuinely rare now while being entirely traditional.
- It is unmistakably a nineteenth-century American name and carries that period plainly.
- The meaning depends on which parent name the family has in mind, and Mary's own meaning is unsettled.
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What they receive
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Mamie
Feminine · #6116 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Mamies are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 13,000 people named Mamie are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Mamie in 2025?
- Mamie ranks #6116 among US girl names in 2025, with 19 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Mamie?
- About 1 in every 84,593 US girls born in 2025 was named Mamie — 19 in all.
- Will my child share the name Mamie with classmates?
- Mamie will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Mamie
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Mena#6116 · Harvey#6116 · Kellie#6116 · Alden#6116 · Jeanna#6116 · Sammi#6116 · Jai#6116 · Alvina#6116
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Mamie? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Mamie and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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