The Welsh diminutive of Margaret, Megan goes back to the very similar sounding Greek word “margarites”, which translates to “pearl”.
Megan is a first name typically given to girls, but in rare cases also used as a boys name.
The name Megan 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, Megan ranks 381. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 5 were named Megan. In total, there are currently 436,410 people – children, adults and seniors – named Megan living in the United States, which is approximately 0.13 % of the entire population.
The Welsh diminutive of Margaret, Megan goes back to the very similar sounding Greek word “margarites”, which translates to “pearl”.
Outside of Wales,... it has only been regularly used since the middle of the 20th century.
This was a real surprise! Megan is a name that has been around for a long time, but only really took off at the end of the 20th century. According to our SmartGenius statistics, it reached its highest rank at #9 in the year 1994, when 16,612 parents chose this name for their newborn daughter. This made Megan much more popular than in previous generations, where it was so rare for several years that it was not even recorded in the statistics. Now, this name seems to have found its place and has established itself in the beginning of the 21st century as well.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Megan was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 2022, Megan ranked 666 in our SmartGenius statistics. In absolute figures, this means it was given to baby girls a total of 398 times. No one knows what names (or combinations of numbers and letters) will be popular 50 years from now, but given its consistent popularity, there is a good chance that Megan will remain a universally popular name.
Wherever you go, wherever you live – there’s a good chance to meet Megan. Because: There are women and girls named Megan in every state in the USA. This may sound quite unspectacular at first, but in fact, of the more than 50,000 different female first names that occur in the USA, just 537 are recorded in each individual state, so the name Megan is definitely something very special. In some regions it even makes it into the top 100 of the most popular female first names, for example in Utah, where Megan ranks on place 19. The greatest chance of meeting Megan, however, is in Alaska, where one in 166 girls and women bears this beautiful name – that is far above average – in the entire USA it is only one in 353 women and girls and in Mississippi, where the name is least represented in relation to the population, you even have to ask an average of 753 women and girls for their name before you once get Megan as an answer.
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 five letters, the name Megan is comparatively short. In fact, 17.0% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly five letters. Only 7% of all first names are even shorter, while 75% have more than five 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.
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 Megan 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 Megan, you can simply say:
Mouse
Elephant
Goat
Apple
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Megan
Megan
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
M
E
G
A
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
E
G
A
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. Megan sounds like this:
