Marli
Feminine · “pleasant wood”
Marli is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 2,841 girls against 5 boys since 1880.
Marli respells Marley — the pleasant wood, or the boundary clearing — and the Old English leah is the commonest element in English place names.
How old is the name Marli?
Marli first appears in US birth records in 1954 — 71 years ago. The typical Marli alive today was born around 2011, making them about 14 years old. About 2,800 people named Marli are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Marli most popular?
Marli peaked in 2008, reaching #1391 nationally. Today it ranks #2298, 907 places below that high. See the whole 2008 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From leah to Marli
The story of Marli
Several English villages are Marley, and the surname comes from them. Bob Marley made it globally familiar, and American families took it as a girls' given name from the 2000s. Marli is a modern respelling and appears in the registers in current use.
Meaningscholars disagree
pleasant wood; boundary clearing
Through Marley, from the Old English leah, 'wood' or 'clearing', with a first element variously read as maere, 'pleasant' or 'boundary', or myrig, 'merry'. The leah element is settled; the first is not. The Marli spelling is modern.
How the name formed
- leah
- Marley
- Marli
Related forms: Marley · Marlee
Pronouncing Marli
MAR-lee
Two syllables, stress on the first. All the spellings of the sound are said identically.
Nicknames for Marli
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
- 1954
- Most girls named
- 2008171 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1391reached in 2008
- Change vs 2024
- −16.0%79 in 2025, from 94
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.
Marli in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Marley in English — spelling variant
- Marlee in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, Florida, Louisiana.
Marlis among us
people named Marli are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 20,345 born in 2025 was named Marli
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Marli
- #2298
- Marli on the 2025 chart
- #856
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Marli went to 79 girls in 2025, but Marly is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 104, which makes it the 856th most-given girls’ name of the year — 1,442 places above the chart.
- Marli79
- Marly25
About 1 girl in 15,454 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 20,345 for Marli itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Marchelle test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Marli's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Marchelle climbed just as high around 1963, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Marchelle's path sketches the road Marli is walking now.
Marli 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
Where Marli is headed
Marli should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Marli beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Marli in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The clearing meaning is concrete and belongs to real English places.
- Lee is available as a short form with an enormous record.
- Two clean syllables with no pronunciation risk.
- One musician dominates the association entirely.
- At least four spellings of the sound are in circulation.
- The first element is genuinely disputed.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Marli
Feminine · #2298 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Marlis are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 2,800 people named Marli are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Marli?
- Marli is the most-used spelling in US records — 79 of the 104 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Marly.
- How popular is the name Marli in 2025?
- Marli ranks #2298 among US girl names in 2025, with 79 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Marli?
- About 1 in every 20,345 US girls born in 2025 was named Marli — 79 in all.
- Will my child share the name Marli with classmates?
- Marli will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Marli
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Shyla#2298 · Skylah#2298 · Therese#2298 · Jennie#2298 · Shira#2298 · Jahzara#2298 · Emelyn#2298 · Khelani#2298
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Marli? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Marli and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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