Merline
given name · English · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Merline is a given name, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Haiti it is the 73rd most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and French, written in the Latin script.
- USUnited States1 in 318K◐
- CMCameroon1 in 4.2K
- HTHaiti1 in 8.2K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈1.1K ●
- Sources
- 172 ●
- 1 in 68K ◐
across 5 countries
16K records
Official registry-verified
Guyana
Meaning & origin
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 1,046 | 12K rec. | 1 in 318K | 1K | Merline | 172 |
| PH Philippines | — | 825 | 695 rec. | — | — | Merline | 13 |
| FR France | — | 711 | 553 rec. | — | — | Merline | 83 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 468 | 483 rec. | — | — | Merline | 29 |
| CM Cameroon | #225 | 466 | 520 rec. | — | — | Merline | 10 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | #231 | 300 | 320 rec. | — | — | Merline | 6 |
| AU Australia | — | 166 | 190 rec. | — | — | Merline | 21 |
| CA Canada | — | 147 | 186 rec. | — | — | Merline | 20 |
| IN India | — | 139 | 112 rec. | — | 7 | Merline | 26 |
| JM Jamaica | #819 | 129 | 139 rec. | — | — | Merline | 5 |
| KE Kenya | — | 104 | 39 rec. | — | — | Merline | 7 |
| DO Dominican Republic | — | 91 | 98 rec. | — | — | Merline | 7 |
Roughly 1K people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 318K). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English11K64%
- French1.6K9%
- Spanish9696%
- Swahili7945%
- 4673%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 11,117 | 64% |
| French | 1,614 | 9% |
| Spanish | 969 | 6% |
| Swahili | 794 | 5% |
| 467 | 3% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1910 | 7 |
| 1914 | 7 |
| 1915 | 8 |
| 1916 | 12 |
| 1917 | 7 |
| 1918 | 11 |
| 1919 | 13 |
| 1920 | 19 |
| 1921 | 26 |
| 1922 | 23 |
| 1923 | 25 |
| 1924 | 37 |
| 1925 | 19 |
| 1926 | 29 |
| 1927 | 36 |
| 1928 | 20 |
| 1929 | 16 |
| 1930 | 25 |
| 1931 | 36 |
| 1932 | 26 |
| 1933 | 30 |
| 1934 | 25 |
| 1935 | 26 |
| 1936 | 24 |
| 1937 | 22 |
| 1938 | 28 |
| 1939 | 31 |
| 1940 | 35 |
| 1941 | 26 |
| 1942 | 25 |
| 1943 | 18 |
| 1944 | 17 |
| 1945 | 20 |
| 1946 | 18 |
| 1947 | 21 |
| 1948 | 20 |
| 1949 | 13 |
| 1950 | 18 |
| 1951 | 12 |
| 1952 | 16 |
| 1953 | 11 |
| 1954 | 13 |
| 1955 | 6 |
| 1956 | 12 |
| 1957 | 7 |
| 1958 | 10 |
| 1959 | 6 |
| 1960 | 11 |
| 1961 | 10 |
| 1962 | 5 |
| 1963 | 8 |
| 1964 | 6 |
| 1966 | 9 |
| 1974 | 7 |
| 1982 | 6 |
| 1983 | 5 |
| 1984 | 8 |
| 1985 | 10 |
| 1986 | 10 |
| 1987 | 5 |
| 1988 | 6 |
| 1989 | 5 |
| 1990 | 9 |
| 1991 | 5 |
| 1996 | 5 |
| 1998 | 6 |
| 2000 | 5 |
| 2001 | 5 |
| 2002 | 8 |
| 2003 | 5 |
| 2007 | 8 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 71 years between 1910–2007. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Merline Johnsonb. 1910USAmerican blues singer in the 1930s and 1940s
- Merline Pitreb. 1943USAmerican historian and educator
- Merline Lovelaceb. 1946writer
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence●
Attested in 30 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1K | #11,985 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 204 | #36,218 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 164 | #101,654 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 156 | #112,568 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 146 | #123,817 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 45 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 45 | #71,575 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1924 | 37 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1931 | 36 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1927 | 36 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1940 | 35 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1939 | 31 | — |
Reference works 1
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 106 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Merline?
- We estimate roughly 1.1 thousand people bear Merline (counting its spellings and scripts) across 5 countries in our records.
- In which country does Merline have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 1.0 thousand people bear Merline in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled merline.
- How common is Merline compared with other names?
- In Haiti, Merline is the 73rd most common given name of 608 given names recorded there.
- Is Merline a male or female name?
- Merline is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/merlineThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Merline” — the 73rd most common given name in Haiti. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.