Meg
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Pet form of Margaret; no dated cite given
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/mɛɡ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Meg is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 4.7K(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 20K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 21K
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)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 563 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.7K (inferred from the name graph)
≈29,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Australia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Myers in US United States, CN China.
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)
Pet form of Margaret; no dated cite given.
Sources 1
- Welsh Surnames
Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Meg 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 | — | ≈29,000 est. | ≈1 in 49K | — | Myers | 16 |
| US United States | — | 7,331 | 1 in 45K | 230K | Myers | 563 |
| AU Australia | #605 | ≈5,400 est. | ≈1 in 4.7K | 3 | Meg | 198 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈5,100 est. | ≈1 in 42K | listed | Meg | 32 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈3,200 est. | ≈1 in 21K | 3 | Meg | 255 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 20K | 1 | Meg | 228 |
| NZ New Zealand | #761 | ≈270 est. | ≈1 in 18K | 15 | Meg | 96 |
| IE Ireland | #682 | ≈240 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Meg | 77 |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; the wgnd-ng-names register; 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)
Meg 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.
Short form of Margaret, an alteration of the obsolete short form Mag(g) (as in Maggie). Until recently Meg was a characteristically Scottish pet form, but it is now used more widely. Its popularity no doubt owes something to Meg March, one of the four sisters who are the main characters in Louisa M. Alcott’s novel Little Women (1855).
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, A diminutive of the female given names Margaret or Megan.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Khmer, n, miss, young lady, girl. 2. np, you ( as a term of address to a child or someone younger than the speaker). E x ,: Where are you going? CtfiEn My girl is grown up now
as a wordHeadley, Cambodian-English Dictionary, Volume I (ក-ភ)
English: short form of MARGARET , an alteration of the obsolete short form Mag(g) (as in MAGGIE ). Until recently Meg was a characteristically Scottish pet form, but it is now used more widely. Its popularity no doubt owes something to Meg March, one of the four sisters who are the main characters in Louisa M. Alcott's novel Little Women (1855).
as a word
In dra-nor-pro, to bake, toast
as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)
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)
- Meg Mundyb. 1915GBBritish-born American actress (1915-2016)
- Meg Wynn Owenb. 1939GBBritish actress (1939–2022)
- Meg Fosterb. 1948USAmerican actress
- Meg Whitmanb. 1956USAmerican business executive
- Meg Tillyb. 1960USAmerican-Canadian actress
- Meg Cabotb. 1967USAmerican novelist and writer
- Meg LeFauveb. 1969USAmerican film producer, screenwriter and television producer
- Meg Whiteb. 1974USAmerican drummer
- Meg Lanningb. 1992AUAustralian cricketer
- Meg Harrisb. 2002AUAustralian swimmer
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 46 sources across 26 countries.
Reference works 2
- 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 are other forms of the name Meg?
- In the etymology graph, Rita, Margarita and Peggy are forms of the same name in other languages; Megan is a recorded short or pet form.
- What does the name Meg mean, and where does it come from?
- Pet form of Margaret; no dated cite given. Recorded by Welsh Surnames.
- In which country does Meg have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 29 thousand people named Meg in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled myers.
- How common is the name Meg?
- In the United States, the national register counted 7,331 people named Meg in 2020, about 1 in 45 thousand residents.
- How common is Meg compared with other names?
- In Australia, Meg is the 605th most common given name of 205,854 given names recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Meg?
- A machine transcription gives /mɛɡ/ (IPA) for English.
- Is Meg a male or female name?
- Meg 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.
What do you want to know about Meg?
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/megThe 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, “Meg” — the 605th most common given name in Australia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.