Merit — #7318 US unisex name

What the Data Says About Merit

The Social Security Administration has registered 265 babies named Merit between 1965 and 2024, spanning 60 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Merit currently holds the #7318 rank among girls for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 2023, when 26 babies received it in a single year. Merit is classified as unisex in SSA records: the opposite-sex variant accounts for 206 additional births since 1918.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Merit performed strongest in the 2010s, accumulating 109 births during that ten-year window. Across the 7 decades of recorded activity, Merit shows a stable profile with only moderate drift from its peak decade. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in Texas, which accounts for 15 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by . In total, SSA state-level files list Merit in 1 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Merit in our reference dataset. These figures derive from SSA's annual national and state-level name files, which include any name appearing at least five times in a given year or state-year; names below that threshold are suppressed for privacy and therefore excluded from the totals shown here. The 265 total represents a lower bound — actual usage may be higher in years or states where the count fell below the disclosure floor. This page is provided for informational and research purposes only and does not constitute personal, legal, or naming advice.