Mel

Unisex name · Mid-century revival

Living in the US: ~2,800 survival-weighted estimate
2025 rank: #7,194 among boys
Births in 2025: 27 4,201 since 1880
Typical age: 62 years, median

Mel popularity over time

Rank among US baby names by birth year, 1902–2025. Lower is more popular; the scale is logarithmic so the top of the chart is not compressed.

The high point was 1958: 132 births recorded as Mel. The name does not appear in the data until 1902. Mel has ranked inside the top 1,000 in 32 years.

In 2025 it ranked #7,194 with 27 births. Compared with 2015, births are up 3.4×. Year on year the rank improved by 1118.

Recorded US births by year. The peak is labelled; the axis starts at zero.

How many people are named Mel?

Roughly 2,800 Mels are alive in the US right now. That is out of 4,201 recorded births since 1880. The split is about 440 women and 2,400 men.

This is a survival-weighted estimate, not a headcount: every recorded birth year is multiplied by the chance someone born that year is still alive, using the SSA period life table. How the estimate works.

How old is the average Mel?

Median age among living Mels: 62. The 1950s produced the largest surviving cohort. By the site’s era rules that makes Mel a mid-century revival name.

Your Mel

Estimated living bearers by age today. Each bar is a birth year, weighted by the chance someone born then is still alive.

Is Mel a boy's or a girl's name?

Share of all recorded US births under this name, 1880 to the latest year.

Mel is genuinely unisex: over the last decade the split is close to even. Across the whole record, 12.1% of births under the name were girls. The name has changed sides: it began mostly on one sex and ends mostly on the other.

Get this data

Every number on this page is available as JSON: /api/name/mel.json. Free to use with attribution (CC BY 4.0).

Mel