Max
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in German: an a popular diminutive of the male given name Maximilian
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/mæks/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Max is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Switzerland it is the 61st most common given name.
- SESweden1 in 455(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 678
- ATAustria≈1 in 873
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Max itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #992 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 566 (measured from records)
- 1 in 455 (inferred from the name graph)
133,914 people, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Sweden
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Макс in RU Russia, FI Finland and Maks in SI Slovenia.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Short form of Maxime/Maximilien; Lat. maximus 'greatest'.
Sources 1
- Dictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
How Max is read(measured from records)
Max is one spelling over 5 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English50%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Max in English.
- German15%
an a popular diminutive of the male given name Maximilian
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
934 Belege; entweder Patronym zu Kurzform von Maximilianus oder verschliffene Form von Marx (zu Rufname Marcus).
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
- Spanish9.4%
Abreviación de Maximiliano.
as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios
- French7.8%
Short form of Maxime/Maximilien; Lat. maximus 'greatest'.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
- Portuguese5.4%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Max in Portuguese.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Max counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #513 | 133,914 | 1 in 2.5K | 133K | Max | 566 |
| DE Germany | #145 | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 678 | — | Max | 292 |
| BR Brazil | — | 36,236 | 1 in 5.8K | 36K | — | 6 |
| RU Russia | #255 | ≈29,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.9K | #1,067 | Макс | 152 |
| FR France | — | ≈29,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | 40K | Max | 16 |
| SE Sweden | #180 | 22,434 | 1 in 455 | 22K | Max | 119 |
| AT Austria | #139 | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 873 | 4.7K | Max | 148 |
| CH Switzerland | #61 | ≈7,100 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | 86 | Max | 131 |
| FI Finland | #817 | 5,701 | 1 in 977 | 6.8K | Макс | 66 |
| SI Slovenia | #176 | 3,299as Maks | 1 in 637 | 3.4K | Maks | 34 |
133,914 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); FSO — Vornamen der Neugeborenen und Wohnbevölkerung; Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SURS — resident population given names; stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Max is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Short form of Maximilian and, perhaps now more commonly in the Englishspeaking world, of Maxwell. It is also used as an independent given name.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In Swedish, Max är ursprungligen en smekform till → Maximilian. Namnet har varit ett av de populäraste under de senaste årtiondena. Barbro Lindgrens (f. 1937) pekböcker om Max (1981–94), har säkerligen bidragit till namnets popularitet. I den rikssvenska almanackan 1 februari och i den finlandssvenska 18 november.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Max Stirnerb. 1806DEGerman philosopher (1806–1856)
- Friedrich Max Müllerb. 1823GBGerman-born British philologist, orientalist and indologist (1823–1900)
- Max Bruchb. 1838DEGerman romantic composer and conductor (1838-1920)
- Max Liebermannb. 1847DEGerman painter (1847–1935)
- Prince Maximilian of Badenb. 1867DEnot in their usual nameGerman chancellor (1867-1929)
- Max von Laueb. 1879DEGerman physicist, Nobel laureate and anti-Nazi (1879–1960)
- Max Bornb. 1882GBGerman-Jewish physicist and mathematician (1882–1970)
- Max Beckmannb. 1884DEGerman painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer (1884–1950)
- Max Euweb. 1901NLDutch chess player and mathematician
- León Neerlandésb. 1997BEnot in their usual nameDutch and Belgian racing driver
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 132 sources across 66 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 133K | #423 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 40K | #401 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 36K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 36K | #720 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 34K | #1,008 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 22K | #189 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 16K | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 6.8K | #258 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 5.7K | — |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024) | 2024 | 4.7K | #54 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 2K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 1.4K | — |
Reference works 8
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Max a male or female name?
- Max is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What are other forms of the name Max?
- In the etymology graph, Maximiliano, Maxime and Maksym are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Maximilian.
- Where does the name Max come from?
- Short form of Maxime/Maximilien; Lat. maximus 'greatest'. Recorded by Dictionnaire généalogique des prénoms.
- In which country does Max have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 134 thousand people named Max, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled max.
- Where is Max most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Max is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 455 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Max?
- In the United States, the national register counted 133,914 people named Max in 2020, about 1 in 2.5 thousand residents.
- How common is Max compared with other names?
- In the United States, Max is the 513th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
- What does the name Max mean?
- In German, an a popular diminutive of the male given name Maximilian
- How do you pronounce Max?
- A machine transcription gives /mæks/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Max?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/maxThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Max” — the 513th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.