Name Generator

How popular is the name Margaret?

Births per year, rank history and how many Margarets are alive today.

Margaret (female), once a common girls' name, is now an uncommon choice for new babies in England and Wales, ranked 413th in 2025 with 98 given the name. The name peaked in 1924, when it was the most popular girls' name outright, given to around 23,900 babies. It has declined since 1924; the 2025 figure is roughly 1% of its peak. Numbers have been falling in recent years. At least 1,000,000 babies have been named Margaret in England and Wales since 1904. Figures before 1996 are estimates. Common short forms of Margaret include Maggie, Rita and Peggy.

The Margaret you are most likely to meet is around 81 years old. Half of all Margarets born in England and Wales are between 72 and 87, and there are at least 310,000 of them alive today. If you walk into a room of 100 females, there's roughly a 63% chance that at least one of them will be called Margaret.

How many babies are named Margaret each year?

Where does Margaret rank among girls' names?

Where this data comes from

Figures from 1996 onwards are the Office for National Statistics' annual baby-name registrations for England and Wales, which record every name given to three or more babies in a year. Figures before 1996 are estimates: the ONS published only top-100 rankings at ten-year intervals back to 1904, so counts for those years are modelled from the rankings, calibrated against Douglas Galbi's long-run research into English name frequencies, and shown with an uncertainty band. Estimates of living bearers combine these birth figures with national life tables and ONS mid-year population estimates.

One limit worth naming: these figures count names as registered at birth. Anyone who changes their name later in life - including trans people, and anyone who adopts a different name by deed poll or simply by use - is not reflected here. Birth registrations record where a name began, not the name a person lives with.