Maxfield
Masculine · “From an English place”
Maxfield is an English surname used as a first name, and it belongs almost entirely to one American painter — a man whose particular blue is now named after him.
How old is the name Maxfield?
Maxfield first appears in US birth records in 1927 — 98 years ago. The typical Maxfield alive today was born around 1999, making them about 26 years old. About 800 people named Maxfield are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Maxfield most popular?
Maxfield peaked in 1989, reaching #2154 nationally. See the whole 1989 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
The story of Maxfield
Maxfield Parrish built his pictures the way a printer builds a color: a monochrome underpainting, then layer after layer of transparent glaze with varnish between them, so that light passes through the upper layers and comes back off the white ground underneath. The blue that results is not a pigment effect but an optical one, and it is unreproducible by ordinary painting — which is why it acquired his name. He was for a stretch the most reproduced artist in America, with prints in something like a quarter of American households, and he worked from photographs of his own models and his own plaster models of landscape, assembling scenes that do not exist from parts that did.
Meaningscholars disagree
From an English place — the elements are argued over
The surname is a variant of Macclesfield or of a similar English place name, and the elements are argued over. As a first name it carries no meaning of its own: it is pointing at a family, or in most American cases at a painter.
Pronouncing Maxfield
MAKS-feeld
Two syllables, stress at the front. Nothing in the spelling is ambiguous.
Nicknames for Maxfield
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
- 1927
- Most boys named
- 200240 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2154reached in 1989
- Change vs 2021
- −37.5%5 in 2024, from 8
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.
Maxfields among us
people named Maxfield are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Maxfield sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- It contains one of the friendliest short forms in English.
- It has a documented and genuinely interesting namesake.
- It is read correctly on sight.
- It reads as a surname, which is the trade every surname name makes.
- Max will do all the work, and the long name may rarely be used.
- There is no settled meaning behind the surname.
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Maxfield
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Maxfields are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 800 people named Maxfield are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Maxfield in 2025?
- Maxfield is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Maxfield with classmates?
- Maxfield will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More M names
The most-given names starting with M, all years combined.
Michael#21 · Matthew#32 · Mark#244 · Mason#39 · Martin#335 · Marvin#699 · Melvin#958 · Marcus#258
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Maxfield? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Maxfield and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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