Maurice
- Pronunciation
- [Mau-rice]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Dark-Skinned: A Moor.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Maurice
Maurice derives from the Late Latin Mauritius, itself rooted in Maurus, a Roman name meaning "dark-skinned" or "a Moor" — the term Romans applied to North African peoples of the Maghreb and western Sahara. The name travelled from Latin into Old French as Maurice and entered English usage through Norman influence, carrying centuries of ecclesiastical weight from Saint Maurice, a third-century martyr venerated across Europe. Its continental forms include the German Moritz and the English surname variant Morris, both reflecting the same Mauritian root.
Among its notable bearers, Maurice Allais was a French economist and physicist born in Paris in 1911 who died in Saint-Cloud in 2010 at the age of ninety-nine. Maurice Chevalier was a French actor, singer, and entertainer born in the working-class Ménilmontant district of Paris in 1888 who died in the same city in 1972. Maurice Ravel was a French composer born in 1875 in the Basque village of Ciboure, near the Spanish border, who died in Paris in 1937 — his full given name was Joseph-Maurice Ravel.
Maurice first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 1911 and peaked impressively at #94 in 1914, reflecting its strong Edwardian-era standing. Over more than a century it has logged 18,113 top-1000 births and remained in the charts into the present day, sitting at #930 in 2024 with 248 births that year. Its steady endurance marks it as a quietly resilient classic. Recorded variants include Morey, Moritz, and Morris.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Maurice
US Popularity History (1911–2024)
Annual US births named Maurice by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1916 with 1,584 boys named Maurice (boy rank #100 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2024, ranked #930 for boys (248 US births). That's 830 places below its 1916 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 Maurice Most Popular?
Average boy-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 boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Maurice the strongest states are South Carolina, Mississippi, Maryland.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Carolina | #469 | 46 |
| 2 | Mississippi | #521 | 30 |
| 3 | Maryland | #547 | 83 |
| 4 | Michigan | #563 | 147 |
| 5 | Georgia | #602 | 161 |
| 6 | Ohio | #611 | 137 |
| 7 | Pennsylvania | #623 | 140 |
| 8 | Alabama | #639 | 58 |
| 9 | Florida | #656 | 219 |
| 10 | Wisconsin | #668 | 38 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Texas | #976 | 70 |
| 2 | Arizona | #922 | 16 |
| 3 | California | #907 | 108 |
| 4 | New Jersey | #804 | 58 |
| 5 | North Carolina | #801 | 85 |
| 6 | New York | #768 | 110 |
| 7 | Tennessee | #754 | 49 |
| 8 | Missouri | #716 | 65 |
| 9 | Minnesota | #684 | 37 |
| 10 | Louisiana | #675 | 44 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Maurice in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Famous People Named Maurice
3 notable figures from history and culture who share the name Maurice.
- Maurice Allais was the first French to receive the Nobel Prize.
- Maurice Chevalier was a French actor and singer best known for the song ‘Thank Heaven for Little Girls’.
- Maurice Ravel was a late 19th century composer, and he was an orchestrator of melodies.
Looking for names like Maurice?
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 Maurice to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Maurice against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).