Melanie
- Pronunciation
- [Me-la-nie]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Dark.
- Origin
- French
About the Name Melanie
Melanie descends from the Greek Melanē, the feminine form of melanos meaning "black" or "dark" — referring to dark hair, dark eyes, or dark complexion. The same root produces the English word "melancholy" (literally "black bile," one of the four humours of medieval medicine) and the modern English "melanin" (the pigment that gives skin and hair its color).
The name's Christian uptake came primarily through Saint Melania the Elder (350–410 CE), a wealthy Roman Christian widow who became a major figure of early Christian asceticism, founding monasteries near the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem; and her granddaughter Saint Melania the Younger (383–439 CE), who similarly devoted her enormous inherited wealth to Christian charitable causes. The two saints established Melania/Melanie as a recognized Christian female name in late antiquity.
The single most influential modern bearer in popular culture is Melanie Hamilton Wilkes, one of the central characters of Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind and the 1939 film of the same name. Melanie's modest, gentle character provided a sustained tonal contrast to Scarlett O'Hara's more passionate ferocity, and the role anchored the name in mid-20th-century American naming. Melanie climbed into the US top 100 girls' rank by 1969 and held a top-100 range through 2005. The name has receded slightly since but remains in steady use. The name's appeal is its layered classical-Christian and pop-culture register — three flowing syllables, soft consonants, and the inherent dark-and-mysterious tonal undercurrent of the underlying Greek root. Common nicknames Mel, Mellie, Lainey, and the rare Anie each carry distinct registers; international forms include Mélanie (French, with accent), Melania (Italian/Spanish/Polish), and the original Greek Melanē.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Melanie
US Popularity History (1968–2025)
Annual US births named Melanie by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1972 with 6,295 girls named Melanie (girl rank #42 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #142 for girls (2,074 US births). That's 100 places below its 1972 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.
Paste the snippet below on any HTML page. Includes a credit link back to 9BabyNames — please keep it intact.
Where in the US Is Melanie 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 Melanie the strongest states are California, Texas, Arizona.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | #55 | 4,912 |
| 2 | Texas | #57 | 3,829 |
| 3 | Arizona | #71 | 740 |
| 4 | Nevada | #78 | 289 |
| 5 | Illinois | #89 | 1,025 |
| 6 | New Mexico | #98 | 142 |
| 7 | Florida | #99 | 1,533 |
| 8 | Maryland | #113 | 410 |
| 9 | New Jersey | #117 | 598 |
| 10 | New York | #120 | 1,247 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Melanie in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Melanie?
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 Melanie to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Melanie against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).