Melaine
Feminine · “black”
Melania means black, and two Roman women who carried it gave away one of the largest fortunes in the empire. The elder and the younger, grandmother and granddaughter, spent decades liquidating estates across three continents and were opposed at every step by relatives, by tenants and by the imperial administration.
How old is the name Melaine?
Melaine first appears in US birth records in 1925 — 100 years ago. The typical Melaine alive today was born around 1980, making them about 45 years old. About 2,300 people named Melaine are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Melaine most popular?
Melaine peaked in 1972, reaching #1364 nationally. See the whole 1972 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Melania to Melaine
The story of Melaine
Melania the Younger inherited property in Italy, Sicily, Africa, Spain and Britain, and set about selling it, which was harder than it sounds: the estates were enormous, the buyers scarce and the law complicated. Her husband's family went to court. She freed thousands of people who worked the land, funded monasteries with the proceeds, and ended up in Jerusalem. The name went into the church calendar and out of it into French, which produced Melanie — and this spelling transposes the last two vowels, landing on an ending French uses for other names entirely.
Meaning
black, dark
The Greek melas means black, and the name is its feminine form. It was used as a personal name in the Greek east and passed into Latin with the Roman family that carried it.
How the name formed
- Melania
- Melanie
- Melaine
Related forms: Melanie · Melania
Pronouncing Melaine
MEL-uh-nee
Three syllables with the weight at the front. Read strictly the spelling would give muh-LAYN, and a few families use that.
Nicknames for Melaine
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
- 1925
- Most girls named
- 198183 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1364reached in 1972
- Change vs 2019
- −30.0%7 in 2022, from 10
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.
Melaine in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Melanie in French — spelling variant
- Melania in Italian — related form
Melaines among us
people named Melaine 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
Melaine 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
- Said aloud it is entirely familiar and needs no explanation.
- Mel and Lainie are ready short forms with quite different characters.
- The Roman women behind it are unusually well documented for late antiquity.
- Melanie is the standard spelling and will be written instead.
- The transposed vowels suggest a French ending and a pronunciation most bearers do not use.
- It reads clearly as a name of the second half of the twentieth century.
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Melaine
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Melaines are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 2,300 people named Melaine are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Melaine in 2025?
- Melaine is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Melaine with classmates?
- Melaine 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
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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