Maynard
Masculine · “strong and brave”
Maynard is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 14,918 boys against 22 girls since 1880.
Maynard is strength and courage, in the Germanic way of pairing two plain words. It came to England with the Normans and settled into the surname system before it ever became a first name again.
How old is the name Maynard?
Maynard was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Maynard alive today was born around 1932, making them about 93 years old. About 4,300 people named Maynard are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Maynard most popular?
Maynard peaked in 1922, reaching #279 nationally. Today it ranks #9714, 9,435 places below that high. See the whole 1922 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Meginhard to Maynard
The story of Maynard
Meginhard was a Frankish and Saxon name, and the Normans carried it to England after the Conquest, where it became the surname Maynard. Like a great many Norman surnames it crossed back into given-name use in nineteenth-century America, where families used surnames as first names freely. Maynard appears in the registers through that century and peaked around 1920.
Meaning
strong and brave
From the Germanic magin, 'strength' or 'might', and hard, 'brave' or 'hardy'. Both elements are among the most productive in old Germanic naming — magin also gives Meinhard and the mag- of Magnus's cousins — and the compound is transparent.
How the name formed
- Meginhard
- Maynard
Related forms: Meinhard · Ménard · Meinard
Pronouncing Maynard
MAY-nurd
Two syllables, stress on the first. No variation between English accents.
Nicknames for Maynard
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 boys named
- 1921397 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #279reached in 1922
- Change vs 2022
- −72.0%7 in 2025, from 25
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.
Maynard in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Meinhard in German — related form
- Ménard in French — related form
- Meinard in Dutch — related form
Maynards among us
people named Maynard are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 244,011 born in 2025 was named Maynard
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Herschel test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Maynard's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Herschel climbed just as high around 1901, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Herschel's path sketches the road Maynard is walking now.
Maynard 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
Maynard beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Maynard in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Both elements are documented and the compound means something coherent and strong.
- Two firm syllables that pair well with almost any surname.
- Cousins exist in German, French and Dutch.
- It reads as a surname to many people, which is what it was for eight hundred years.
- It is strongly period-coded to the early twentieth century.
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What they receive
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Maynard
Masculine · #9714 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Maynards are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 4,300 people named Maynard are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Maynard in 2025?
- Maynard ranks #9714 among US boy names in 2025, with 7 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Maynard?
- About 1 in every 244,011 US boys born in 2025 was named Maynard — 7 in all.
- Will my child share the name Maynard with classmates?
- Maynard will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Maynard
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Vern#9714 · Abrahm#9714 · Sid#9714 · Hartwell#9714 · Kwan#9714 · Adrean#9714 · Chancey#9714 · Bob#9714
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Maynard? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Maynard and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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