The given name Mark is both an English and German form of Marcus. It has its origin in the Roman god of war Mars and means ‘belonging to Mars’ or also ‘son of Mars’.
Mark is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The name Mark 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 boys names, Mark ranks 199. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 11 were named Mark. In total, there are currently 1,347,375 people – children, adults and seniors – named Mark living in the United States, which is approximately 0.40 % of the entire population.
The given name Mark is both an English and German form of Marcus. It has its origin in the Roman god of war Mars and means ‘belonging to Mars’ or also ‘son of Mars’.
The Mark was originally ... a medieval weight or mass unit, which supplanted the pound weight as a precious metals and coinage weight from the 11th century. The Cologne mark, for example, corresponded to about 234 grams.
History tends to focus on the most famous and the best. But even those who play second fiddle leave their mark: Mark is one of those names without which the orchestra would be incomplete. In fact, the SmartGenius top ranking #6 has been hit more than once, although the last instance was some time ago, way back in the last century in 1964. But even though the peak of its popularity was many decades ago, the name Mark has been given to newborn boys every year since records began. Mark is a name of exceptional enduring popularity, conveying the special vibes of the 20th century.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Mark was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
The popularity of the name Mark peaked long ago, but the name has nevertheless arrived in the 21st century. In 2022, it ranked #243 in our statistics - maybe a far cry from when your grandparents or great-grandparents were kids and Mark made it into the top ten more than once, but still: Traditional names often turn out to be perennial favorites, so maybe it is only a matter of time before Mark returns to the top.
There are only 386 different male names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Mark is one of them. However, Mark is not equally widespread in all states, but people in Minnesota seem to particularly fancy this name – the 37,599 men called Mark who live here are 1,23% of all male residents and push their name up to #12 in our SmartGenius statistics, easily placing it in the top 100 most common male names in Minnesota. If you look at all the states in the USA together, you can currently find as many as 1,347,375 people with the name Mark. Across all regions and age groups, this lands Mark on position 17 in our SmartGenius ranking of the top male names – of course, the current popularity as a baby name for newborns looks somewhat different, as you can see from the statistics above.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter M is a particularly popular initial letter for boys’ names – 6.2% of all common boys’ names in the US begin with this letter. By the way, the most common first letters for boys’ names are J and A.
With four letters, the name Mark is shorter than most other given names. In fact, only 5.5% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly four letters. Just 1.2% of all first names are even shorter, while 93% consist of more than four letters. 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.
That means that with 6.2% of all boys' names that begin with an M, this first letter is much more common than the other letters on average. If you are now wondering which boys’ name with M is the most common... the answer is Michael.
If your name is Mark 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 Mark, you can simply say:
Mouse
Apple
Rocket
Koala
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Mark
Mark
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
M
A
R
K
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
K
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. Mark sounds like this:
