girls:
249 births since 1965
#5467 (4th percentile)
boys:
192 births since 1918
#4394 (4th percentile)
overall:
441 births since 1918
#7298 (6th percentile)
The name Merit is the #7,298 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 441 recorded births since 1918. This represents the 5.7% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 5.7% of all names). For girls, it ranks #5,467 (4.3% percentile) for all time with 249 births since 1965. For boys, it ranks #4,394 (4.1% percentile) for all time with 192 births since 1918.
Merit first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1918 (1918 for boys and 1965 for girls). Birth data for Merit is available in 32 out of the 106 years between 1918 and 2023 (26 years for girls and 20 years for boys). The Social Security Administration only reports birth data for years in which the name was given to at least five children of the same gender.
The name Merit has been given to both genders, with a slight preference for girls (56.5% of all recorded births). In 2023, 70.3% of babies named Merit were girls. Interestingly, until around 1965, the name was more popular for boys (100.0% boys from 1918 to 1964), but since then it has been more commonly used for girls (60.3% girls from 1965 to 2023).
For girls, Merit reached its peak popularity in 2023, achieving the 2.2% percentile (ranked #926) with 15 births per million. The name was most common in 2023, with 15 births per million (ranked 2.2% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2012, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Merit is at or near its peak popularity for girls, ranked #926 (2.2% percentile) with 15 births per million.
For boys, Merit reached its peak popularity in 2014, achieving the 1.2% percentile (ranked #893) with 8 births per million. The name was most common in 2020, with 8 births per million (ranked 1.1% percentile). Since reaching a high point around 2020, the popularity of this name for boys has been declining. Currently, Merit ranks #905 for boys (0.7% percentile) with 6 births per million, which is 74.1% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Merit".
These names exclude other spelling variations of Merritt. View all variations of Merritt.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Merit", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. This list excludes the 3 other name spellings that we've determined are also variations of "Merritt" based on shared pronunciations. Click here for more details on names that are pronounced like Merritt..
Our model has identified 3 different pronunciations for the name Merit. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 65.9% confident that Merit is pronounced as MEH-riht, which has 2 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is MEH-ruht, at 19.5% confidence, with 2 syllables.
If none of the pronunciations above sound right to you, could you please check whether any of these related pronunciations should be applied to the name Merit? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Merit. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Merit, please vote using the thumbs up button.
Our confidence scores estimate the likelihood that a particular pronunciation is the most correct for a given name spelling. These scores are derived from pronunciation dictionaries, manual verification, your feedback, and a fine-tuned large language model trained to generate name pronunciations.
For any given spelling, confidence scores across all identified pronunciations sum to 100%. However, these scores don't account for the possibility of valid pronunciations that our model hasn't identified.
The raw pronunciations shown (like M EH1 R IH0 T) use the ARPAbet phoneme system, a standardized way to represent English speech sounds. Each symbol represents a distinct sound in American English. Visit the ARPAbet Wikipedia page to learn more about these phonetic symbols.
Pronunciation audio is generated by an open source text to speech model that has been customized to adhere to pronunciations provided in ARPAbet format, but sometimes pronunciations that differ subtly will sound identical, particularly if the only difference is the level of emphasis on a syllable or a single vowel sound.
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