Maxine
- Pronunciation
- [Ma-xine]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- The Greatest. Feminine Of Max.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Maxine
Maxine is the English feminine form of Max, which is itself a short form of Maximilian or Maxwell, both tracing back to the Latin maximus, meaning "the greatest." The -ine suffix is a standard French and English feminine ending, giving the name a polished, slightly formal quality while preserving the boldness of its root. As a standalone feminine name, Maxine carries a confident, assertive character that sets it apart from more softly lyrical feminizations — it is a name that makes a statement.
Maxine first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 1915 and reached its peak of #76 in 1923, placing it firmly in the jazz-age era of strong, self-possessed feminine names. After a long mid-century absence from the charts, it has staged a notable modern revival: currently sitting at #520 in 2024 with 591 births, its most active recent presence in decades, and accumulating more than 53,000 top-1000 births across its full tracked span. The revival reflects a broader contemporary appetite for vintage names with genuine backbone.
Maxine's compact sound — three syllables with a punchy opening — makes it easy to use and hard to forget. Recorded variants include Max, Maxi, Maxie, Maxima, Maxime, and Maxy, a notably diverse family that spans casual nicknames, Latin-inflected formal variants, and French-influenced forms.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Maxine
US Popularity History (1915–2025)
Annual US births named Maxine by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1924 with 3,659 girls named Maxine (girl rank #77 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #497 for girls (597 US births). That's 420 places below its 1924 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 Maxine 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 Maxine the strongest states are Oregon, California, Iowa.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Oregon | #469 | 53 |
| 2 | California | #485 | 691 |
| 3 | Iowa | #500 | 28 |
| 4 | Kansas | #520 | 20 |
| 5 | Minnesota | #530 | 106 |
| 6 | Michigan | #578 | 125 |
| 7 | Ohio | #582 | 143 |
| 8 | Washington | #583 | 131 |
| 9 | Colorado | #602 | 79 |
| 10 | Missouri | #605 | 96 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Florida | #957 | 65 |
| 2 | North Carolina | #848 | 60 |
| 3 | Texas | #830 | 189 |
| 4 | Virginia | #780 | 71 |
| 5 | Tennessee | #759 | 39 |
| 6 | Maryland | #722 | 47 |
| 7 | New York | #709 | 206 |
| 8 | New Jersey | #705 | 70 |
| 9 | Wisconsin | #705 | 71 |
| 10 | Arizona | #687 | 61 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Maxine in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Maxine?
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 Maxine to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Maxine 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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