Meg
Feminine · “pearl”
Meg is a clipping that never needed a detour. Margaret gave Meg directly — no rhyme, no substitution, just the first syllable — and unlike Peg, which came from Meg by swapping the consonant, it has no explaining to do. It has been given as a name in its own right for a long time, and one novel is largely responsible.
How old is the name Meg?
Meg first appears in US birth records in 1941 — 84 years ago. The typical Meg alive today was born around 1973, making them about 52 years old. About 4,900 people named Meg are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Meg most popular?
Meg peaked in 1959, reaching #714 nationally. See the whole 1959 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From margarites to Meg
The story of Meg
Little Women gave the eldest March sister the name Meg, and the book has been continuously in print since the eighteen-sixties, read by generations of American girls and adapted for film every twenty years or so. That is a considerable amount of visibility for a short form. Meg has been given on its own since, without Margaret standing behind it, and it belongs to a small group of one-syllable women's names — Meg, Bess, Nell, Kate — that read as plain and old at the same time.
Meaning
pearl
Margaret comes from Greek margarites, a pearl, a word that arrived in Greek from further east along with the object itself. Meg is the plain front clipping, and the meaning travels with it intact. What Meg does not have is the strangeness of Peg and Polly, which were made by rhyming a clipped name into a new consonant — a medieval English habit with no clear explanation and no equivalent elsewhere.
How the name formed
- margarites
- Margaret
- Meg
Related forms: Meg · Megan
Pronouncing Meg
MEG
MEG, one syllable, rhyming with leg. There is no other reading and no spelling question — three letters doing exactly what they look like they do.
Nicknames for Meg
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
- 1941
- Most girls named
- 1962184 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #714reached in 1959
- Change vs 2020
- −45.5%6 in 2022, from 11
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.
Meg in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Meg in Scots — same name
- Megan in Welsh — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Utah, California.
Megs among us
people named Meg 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
Meg 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
- Three letters, one syllable, and impossible to mispronounce or misspell.
- Margaret is available as a formal long form with an unbroken European history.
- The meaning is a single word and needs no explanation.
- It reads as a short form to many people, and Margaret will be assumed even where it is the legal name.
- A single syllable against a short surname lands abruptly, and the name gives nothing to soften it.
- Megan is far more common in America and this will occasionally be treated as a shortening of it.
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What they receive
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Meg
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Megs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 4,900 people named Meg are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Meg in 2025?
- Meg is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Meg with classmates?
- Meg will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More M names
The most-given names starting with M, all years combined.
Mary#125 · Margaret#112 · Michelle#465 · Melissa#419 · Maria#87 · Martha#712 · Marie#617 · Mildred#1962
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Meg? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Meg and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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