The name Marilyn is a combination of Mary and Lyn. There are many assumptions about the meaning, the most popular are ‘star of the sea’ and ‘pretty star’.
Marilyn is a first name typically given to girls, but in rare cases also used as a boys name.
The name Marilyn isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all girls names, Marilyn ranks 479. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 4 were named Marilyn. In total, there are currently 368,357 people – children, adults and seniors – named Marilyn living in the United States, which is approximately 0.11 % of the entire population.
The name Marilyn is a combination of Mary and Lyn. There are many assumptions about the meaning, the most popular are ‘star of the sea’ and ‘pretty star’.
This name was very... rare before the 20th century. It was popularized by Broadway star Marylin Miller and later by Marilyn Monroe, who chose her stage name in honor of Miller.
#13 - this is the highest position Marilyn has ever reached. Most names never manage to reach such high popularity in even one of the 143 years of records.The last time Marilyn reached this top position was in the last century, in 1937, when 9,783 newborn girls were named Marilyn. But as our statistics show, Marilyn has not always been a popular name: in some years of records, lastly in the year 1902, it was either not given to newborns at all or less than 5 times (a name is only included in the official statistics if it is given at least 5 times in a year). Even today it's not at the peak of its popularity, nevertheless Marilyn is still the first choice of some parents every year as the most beautiful first name for their newborn daughter.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Marilyn was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 2022, 419 newborns were given the name Marilyn, making them rank #634. Although the name Marilyn was more popular in the last century than it is today, it is still common and for some parents it is the name of choice for their daughter. So the chances of an encounter with a young Marilyn are still there in our contemporary times.
There are only 537 different women’s names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Marilyn is one of them. However, Marilyn is not equally widespread in all states, but people in Iowa seem to particularly fancy this name – the 11,107 women called Marilyn who live here are 0,547% of all female residents and push their name up to #28, easily placing it in the top 100 most common female names in Iowa.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter M is a quite popular first letter for girls' names. That’s because 8.5% of all common girls’ names in the US begin with this letter. Only the first letters A and S are more common for girls' names.
With seven letters, the name Marilyn has a typical length for first names in the US. In fact, 26% of all common first names consist of exactly seven letters. 52% of all first names are shorter, while 22% have eight letters or more. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
Therefore: As 8.5% of all girls' names start with an M, this initial letter occurs nearly 2.5-times as often as all 26 letters on average – and the most common one of all the girls’ names starting with M is Mary.
If your name is Marilyn and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Marilyn, you can simply say:
Mouse
Apple
Rocket
Igloo
Lion
Yoyo
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Marilyn
Marilyn
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
M
A
R
I
L
Y
N
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
M
A
R
I
L
Y
N
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Marilyn sounds like this:
