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Girls' name · 120,735 recorded births

Miriam

#246 in the US in 2025

Where Miriam stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#246girls’ names · US 2025

Miriam was the 246th most registered girls' name in the United States in 2025, on 1,262 births.

peak 1924 · 1,834188019532025

Its moment was 1924, when 1,834 babies were given it.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

#246US rank, 2025 (girls)
1,262US births in 2025
#134its best US rank, in 1917
1924peak year — 1,834 births
117,910US births since 1880
1,534NZ births since 1901
1,291E&W births, 2019–2025
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Miriam's figures are worked out

  1. Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
  2. Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
  3. The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
  4. The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
  5. A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Miriam was under the floor in no year of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000

Full methodology →

Miriam in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.075149
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Miriam in the United States, 1880–2025

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been steady.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Miriam in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Miriam has been registered 1,534 times since 1901, peaking in 1960 with 32 births. It did not clear the DIA's 10-birth reporting floor in 2025.

1900192019401960198020002020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 10-BIRTH FLOOR0.0101201
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 10-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Miriam in New Zealand, 1900–2025

SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Miriam in England & Wales

In England and Wales, Miriam was registered 1,291 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2022 with 204 births. It ranked #237 for girls in 2025 on 197 births. Across those years it has been rising.

20200.03978
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 3-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Miriam in England and Wales, 2019–2025

Seven years is a window, not a history. Unlike the American and New Zealand series this one cannot show you a name's arrival or its long decline — ONS publishes the full list only from 2019. England and Wales only: Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and are not counted here.

SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Decade by decade in the US

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1880#29428
1890#27383
1900#214214
1910#186368
1920#1401,744
1930#1831,052
1940#231735
1950#264841
1960#2811,051
1970#370655
1980#309781
1990#283983
2000#2781,162
2010#3001,086
2020#2681,151

<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.

Where in the United States

The states that registered Miriam most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.

StateBirths
New York24,895
Pennsylvania10,129
California9,883
Texas6,391
New Jersey6,308
Ohio5,562
Illinois4,381
Georgia3,152
Massachusetts2,983
South Carolina2,711

Questions about Miriam

How popular is the name Miriam?

Miriam ranked #246 for girls in the United States in 2025, on 1,262 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Miriam most popular?

Miriam peaked in 1924, when 1,834 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Miriam rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all girls' births, Miriam has been steady between 2016 and 2025.

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 1924, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.

SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026

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Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.