Maddox
Meaning
surname, "son of Madoc", traditionally "fortunate"
The story
Maddox is a Welsh patronymic, son of Madoc, a name legend attaches to a prince said to have sailed west centuries before Columbus. As an American first name it is brand new: 69 boys in all of the 1990s, then nearly 10,000 in the 2000s. Those are the years Angelina Jolie's son Maddox was in every magazine, and while a decade bucket cannot convict a single celebrity, the arithmetic of the coincidence is stark. The climb continued to about 26,500 in the 2010s, with 12,400 so far this decade. It remains firmly a boys' name, roughly 47,000 boys to 1,800 girls in our records, and its final X places it in the small squad of modern favorites, Jax, Knox, Hendrix, that let a family surname land like a comic-book hero. Underneath the flash sits a genuinely old Welsh name whose traditional reading is fortunate.
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Maddox peaked in the 2010s and the 2020s in nearly equal measure.
When you meet Maddox
Most people given the name Maddox in the United States are children or teenagers today. The name belongs to this generation.
Estimated from US Social Security birth registrations and typical lifespans; a rough guide, not a rule.
The Maddox deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Maddox truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Maddox fits with your family’s names and surname.
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