Mercy
Feminine · Latin roots · “compassion”
Mercy is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 10,632 girls against 232 boys since 1880.
Mercy is one of the English virtue names the Puritans put into use alongside Faith, Hope, Patience and Charity — an ordinary word lifted straight into the baptismal register. It arrived in the Latin of the church, where a word for payment turned into a word for compassion, and it has been on American records without a break since the earliest years such things were counted.
How old is the name Mercy?
Mercy first appears in US birth records in 1881 — 144 years ago. The typical Mercy alive today was born around 2011, making them about 14 years old. About 9,300 people named Mercy are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Mercy most popular?
Mercy peaked in 1881, reaching #582 nationally. Today it ranks #862, 280 places below that high. See the whole 1881 chart.
Mercy appears on these lists:
Where it comes from
From merces (Latin) to Mercy
The story of Mercy
The word traveled a long way before it became a name: Latin merces meant payment or wages, and in the Latin of the early Church it came to mean the reward of heaven, then pity and forgiveness. Old French carried it as merci into English as mercy. English Protestants of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries turned abstract virtues into given names, and Mercy went into parish registers next to Faith, Hope and Prudence, crossing the Atlantic with those families. John Bunyan gave the name to a companion of Christiana in the second part of The Pilgrim's Progress in 1684, which kept it in front of readers for generations. It is also well used today across English-speaking West and East Africa, where virtue names in English remain a living tradition.
Meaning
compassion, forbearance, forgiveness
The English word came through Old French merci from Latin merces, 'wages, payment' — in Christian Latin it shifted to mean heavenly reward, and then pity or clemency.
How the name formed
- mercesLatin
- merciOld French
- Mercy
Related forms: Mercedes · Merced · Mercede · Mercedes
Pronouncing Mercy
MUR-see
Two syllables, stress on the first, exactly like the English word. Anyone who reads English will say it right the first time.
Nicknames for Mercy
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
- 1881
- Most girls named
- 2019441 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #582reached in 1881
- Change vs 2022
- −11.8%313 in 2025, from 355
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.
Mercy in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Mercedes in Spanish — related form
- Merced in Spanish — related form
- Mercede in Italian — related form
- Mercedes in Portuguese — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, Georgia.
Mercys among us
people named Mercy are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 5,135 born in 2025 was named Mercy
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Mercy
- #862
- Mercy on the 2025 chart
- #625
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Mercy went to 313 girls in 2025, but Merci is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 357, which makes it the 625th most-given girls’ name of the year — 237 places above the chart.
- Mercy313
- Merci44
About 1 girl in 4,502 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 5,135 for Mercy 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
Fashion outlook
Mercy 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 Mercy is headed
Mercy 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.
Mercy beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Mercy in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Spelled the way the ordinary English word is spelled, so it rarely needs repeating or correcting.
- Two clean syllables with the stress in the obvious place — no pronunciation guesswork in any English-speaking country.
- Part of the Puritan virtue-name family with Faith, Hope and Grace, so it sits naturally beside very familiar names.
- An unbroken record in American use since records began, and a living tradition in English-speaking Africa as well.
- It is also a common noun and an exclamation — 'mercy me', 'have mercy', 'at the mercy of'. Most of that is affectionate rather than cruel, but the wordplay will happen.
- The name carries an audible Protestant and biblical flavor. That is a pleasure for some families and a mismatch for others; worth deciding on deliberately.
- There is no established short form, so it will mostly be used whole. Some children like that; others miss having a nickname to hand.
- Uncommon enough that she is unlikely to share it with a classmate, which means occasionally explaining that yes, that is her name.
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What they receive
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Mercy
Feminine · Latin roots · #862 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Mercys are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 9,300 people named Mercy are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Mercy?
- Mercy is the most-used spelling in US records — 313 of the 357 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Merci.
- How popular is the name Mercy in 2025?
- Mercy ranks #862 among US girl names in 2025, with 313 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Mercy?
- About 1 in every 5,135 US girls born in 2025 was named Mercy — 313 in all.
- Will my child share the name Mercy with classmates?
- Mercy will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Mercy
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Ayleen#862 · Jemma#862 · Eleanora#862 · Soraya#862 · Arisbeth#862 · Deborah#862 · Haley#861 · Lilia#859
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Mercy? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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