Marilyn
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Modern English blend of Mary and Lynn; from Hebrew Miryam
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/mɛɹəʎɪn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Marilyn is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In the Philippines it is the 42nd most common given name.
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 405(inferred from the name graph)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 936
- CACanada≈1 in 949
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #408 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 559 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 405 (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,400,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Philippines, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
Modern English blend of Mary and Lynn; from Hebrew Miryam.
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 26 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Marilyn 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈1,400,000 est. | ≈1 in 1K | — | Marilyn | 37 |
| PH Philippines | #42 | ≈270,000 est. | ≈1 in 405 | 56K | Marilyn | 144 |
| US United States | #178 | 248,652 | 1 in 1.3K | 248K | Marilyn | 559 |
| GB United Kingdom | #230 | ≈58,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | 4 | Marilyn | 224 |
| CA Canada | #168 | ≈40,000 est. | ≈1 in 949 | 4 | Marilyn | 257 |
| SG Singapore | #126 | ≈5,600 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Marilyn | 74 |
| NZ New Zealand | #185 | ≈5,300 est. | ≈1 in 936 | 10 | Marilyn | 95 |
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; Top 500 First Names in the Philippines (PSA FOI response, tracking; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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)
Marilyn is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Form of Mary; often treated as a blend of Mary and Lynn
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In English, blend name, influenced by Mary and Lin/Lynn
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In English, A female given name originating as a coinage.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, Marilyn är en engelsk kombination av → Mary och efterleden -lyn eller förnamnet Lynn. Det förknippas särskilt med den amerikanska skådespelerskan Marilyn Monroe (1926–62) som egentligen hette Norma Jeane Baker.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In French, Origine hébraïque, « goutte de mer ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
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)
- Marilyn Monroeb. 1926USAmerican actress and model (1926–1962)
- Marilyn Bergmanb. 1929USAmerican composer, songwriter and author (1929–2022)
- Marilyn Horneb. 1934USAmerican mezzo-soprano opera singer (born 1934)
- Marilyn Lightstoneb. 1940CAactress
- Marilyn Fryeb. 1941USfeminist philosopher and professor
- Diana Quickb. 1946GBnot in their usual nameBritish actress
- Marilyn Quayleb. 1949USSecond Lady of the United States from 1989 to 1993
- Marilyn Chambersb. 1952USAmerican pornographic actress (1952-2009)
- Marilyn Mansonb. 1969USAmerican musician (born 1969)
- Tamiab. 1975CAnot in their usual nameCanadian musician and singer
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 82 sources across 48 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 248K | #221 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 356 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 300 | #221 |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 18 | — |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 1974 | 10 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1997 | 6 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 4 | #938 |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 1990 | 4 | #546 |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2015 | 3 | #426 |
Reference works 3
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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
- What does the name Marilyn mean, and where does it come from?
- Modern English blend of Mary and Lynn; from Hebrew Miryam. Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- What are other forms of the name Marilyn?
- In the etymology graph, Maria, Miriam and Mariana are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Mary and Marie.
- Is Marilyn a male or female name?
- Marilyn is a female 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.
- In which country does Marilyn have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.4 million people named Marilyn in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled marilyn.
- How common is the name Marilyn?
- In the United States, the national register counted 248,652 people named Marilyn in 2020, about 1 in 1.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Marilyn compared with other names?
- In the Philippines, Marilyn is the 42nd most common given name of 486,299 given names recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Marilyn?
- A machine transcription gives /mɛɹəʎɪn/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Marilyn?
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/marilynThe 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, “Marilyn” — the 42nd most common given name in Philippines. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.