Merritt — #1888 US boys' name

What the Data Says About Merritt

The Social Security Administration has registered 6,034 babies named Merritt between 1880 and 2024, spanning 145 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a boy's name, Merritt currently holds the #1888 rank among boys for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 1924, when 121 babies received it in a single year. Merritt is classified as unisex in SSA records: the opposite-sex variant accounts for 2,829 additional births since 1919.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Merritt performed strongest in the 1920s, accumulating 966 births during that ten-year window. Across the 15 decades of recorded activity, Merritt shows notable generational variation in parental adoption. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in New York, which accounts for 366 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by Pennsylvania and California. In total, SSA state-level files list Merritt in 29 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Merritt 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 6,034 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.