Mae: Meaning of Baby Name Mae

About the Name Mae

Mae descends from the Old English short form of Mary or Margaret (see separate entries) or from the English calendar month name May, ultimately from the Latin Maia (the Roman goddess of growth and spring). The name has been used continuously in American naming since the 19th century, particularly common in Southern-American naming.

Notable bearers include the iconic American actress Mae West (1893–1980, the iconic American actress, comedian, and screenwriter whose career through the 1920s through the 1960s made her one of the foundational figures of American comedy and the bawdy double-entendre tradition); American filmmaker Mae Whitman (born 1988, the American actress of NBC's Parenthood 2010–2015); American astronaut Mae Jemison (born 1956, the iconic American astronaut who in 1992 became the first African-American woman to travel to space); and the contemporary American singer Mae Muller.

Mae held a US top-50 girls' rank from 1880 through 1925 — about four 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 Maisie. Mae climbed back into the US top 300 girls' rank by 2018 and the top 300 since. The name's appeal is its compact warm classical-American register — one short syllable, soft consonants, instantly readable, and the in-built Mary/Margaret/May-classical pedigree. The strong Mae West and Mae Jemison American cultural anchors maintain the name's contemporary relevance. The name reads as both classical-vintage and contemporary American. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — the rare May (the alternate spelling) and Mae-bear each occasionally appear; the alternate spellings Mae, May, and Mai have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Maja (Slavic), Maia (Greek), and the broader Mary/Maia family.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.

Quick Facts About Mae

552

Anglo baby names in our dictionary

150

Anglo female names

15

3-letter M-names in our dictionary

777

M-female names total

1880–2025

years of US SSA records (57 total)

61,475

total US births named Mae (all years)

US Popularity History (1880–2025)

🔥 Rising fast: Mae climbed 73 places in the US girls ranking over the last 5 years (#574 in 2020 → #501 in 2025).

Annual US births named Mae by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1918 with 2,756 girls named Mae (girl rank #95 that year).

Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #501 for girls (594 US births). That's 406 places below its 1918 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.

Where in the US Is Mae 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 Mae the strongest states are Maine, District of Columbia, Utah.

Strongest girls-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Maine	#210	23
2	District of Columbia	#240	31
3	Utah	#244	174
4	Massachusetts	#311	182
5	Minnesota	#315	170
6	Illinois	#351	300
7	Idaho	#356	37
8	Nebraska	#363	42
9	Colorado	#366	144
10	Connecticut	#367	65

Weakest girls-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	California	#851	304
2	Florida	#811	102
3	Kentucky	#782	21
4	Texas	#774	242
5	Maryland	#701	74
6	Georgia	#694	78
7	New Jersey	#684	91
8	North Carolina	#650	139
9	South Carolina	#648	59
10	Arizona	#646	89

Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Mae in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.

Variant Forms

Name	Meaning	Gender	Origin
Maia	Myth Name (Mother Of Hermes)	Female	Greek
Maya	Abbreviation Of Amalia: Variant Of Maia.	Female	Spanish

Looking for names like Mae?

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.

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Compare Mae to Other Popular Names

Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Mae against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).

Mae vs Olivia 210,124 births since 2014

Mae vs Emma 202,477 births since 2014

Mae vs Sophia 169,709 births since 2014

Mae vs Isabella 158,431 births since 2014

Mae vs Ava 157,356 births since 2014

Mae vs Charlotte 151,872 births since 2014

Mae vs Mia 149,779 births since 2014

Mae vs Amelia 142,728 births since 2014

Compare to a different name →