girls:
5.1k births since 1892
#2358 (59th percentile)
boys:
431 births since 1912
#4155 (9th percentile)
overall:
5.6k births since 1892
#3645 (53rd percentile)
The name Meryl is the #3,645 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 5,562 recorded births since 1892. This represents the 52.9% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 52.9% of all names). For girls, it ranks #2,358 (58.7% percentile) for all time with 5,131 births since 1892. For boys, it ranks #4,155 (9.3% percentile) for all time with 431 births since 1912.
Meryl first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1892 (1892 for girls and 1912 for boys). Birth data for Meryl is available in 126 out of the 132 years between 1892 and 2023 (126 years for girls and 44 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 Meryl has been given almost exclusively to girls, with 92.3% of all recorded births being female.
For girls, Meryl reached its peak popularity in 1956, achieving the 20.0% percentile (ranked #598) with 76 births per million. The name was most common in 1956, with 76 births per million (ranked 20.0% percentile). Despite a low point in 2017, the name has seen a recent decline in popularity for girls. Currently, Meryl ranks #932 for girls (1.6% percentile) with 11 births per million, which is 15.1% of its peak share of births.
For boys, Meryl reached its peak popularity in 1921, achieving the 2.4% percentile (ranked #537) with 16 births per million. The name was most common in 1921, with 16 births per million (ranked 2.4% percentile). There have been no recorded male births with this name since 1967.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Meryl".
These names exclude other spelling variations of Merrill. View all variations of Merrill.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Meryl", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. This list excludes the 12 other name spellings that we've determined are also variations of "Merrill" based on shared pronunciations. Click here for more details on names that are pronounced like Merrill..
Our model has identified 3 different pronunciations for the name Meryl. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 73.3% confident that Meryl is pronounced as MEH-ruhl, which has 2 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is MEH-rihl, at 15.6% 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 Meryl? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Meryl. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Meryl, 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 AH0 L) 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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