Mabel
- Pronunciation
- [Ma-bel]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Lovable MADONNA
- Origin
- Latin
About the Name Mabel
Mabel descends from the Old French Amabel, ultimately from the Latin amabilis meaning "lovable" or "worthy of love." The name has been used in English-speaking countries since the medieval period as a popular feminine name, often anglicized over centuries from the original Amabel form.
Notable bearers include American silent-film actress Mabel Normand (1892–1930, the iconic American silent comedy actress of the Mack Sennett Keystone Studios era); American novelist Mabel L. Robinson; and the iconic Mabel Pines of Disney Channel's Gravity Falls (2012–2016, the animated series that became a cult favorite, anchoring the name in 2010s American children's TV memory).
Mabel held a US top-25 girls' rank from 1880 through 1900 — about two decades of late-Victorian American popularity. After a long mid-20th-century quiet period, the name has been climbing back through the 2010s and 2020s as part of the broader vintage-revival wave alongside Hattie, Sadie, and Maggie. Mabel climbed back into the US top 300 girls' rank by 2018 and the top 300 since. The name's appeal is its compact warm vintage-American register — two short syllables, soft consonants, instantly readable, and the in-built Latinate "lovable" etymological register. The strong Gravity Falls Mabel Pines cultural anchor maintains the name's contemporary children's-TV relevance. The name reads as both classical-vintage and contemporary American. Common nicknames Mae (back-end shortening, a popular standalone name on its own), May, Mabs, and the rare Belle each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Mabel, Mabelle, and Maybell have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Amabilis (Latin original), Amable (Spanish), Mabel (essentially identical across English/Spanish/Portuguese), and the broader Amabel/amabilis family.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Mabel
US Popularity History (1880–2025)
Annual US births named Mabel by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1915 with 3,683 girls named Mabel (girl rank #62 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #201 for girls (1,522 US births). That's 139 places below its 1915 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Mabel Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Mabel the strongest states are New Hampshire, Montana, Minnesota.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Hampshire | #123 | 63 |
| 2 | Montana | #134 | 65 |
| 3 | Minnesota | #139 | 387 |
| 4 | Alaska | #141 | 30 |
| 5 | Rhode Island | #153 | 20 |
| 6 | Maine | #161 | 58 |
| 7 | Utah | #174 | 255 |
| 8 | Wisconsin | #177 | 303 |
| 9 | District of Columbia | #195 | 18 |
| 10 | Colorado | #212 | 253 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Florida | #796 | 183 |
| 2 | Georgia | #692 | 141 |
| 3 | New Jersey | #622 | 105 |
| 4 | Alabama | #612 | 46 |
| 5 | Texas | #610 | 496 |
| 6 | Louisiana | #591 | 46 |
| 7 | New York | #523 | 312 |
| 8 | Tennessee | #520 | 140 |
| 9 | South Carolina | #517 | 80 |
| 10 | North Carolina | #514 | 207 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Mabel in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mable | Lovable. Abbreviation Of Amabel. | Female | English |
Looking for names like Mabel?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Mabel to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Mabel against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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