Merritt
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Meaning
“English surname from Merriott in Somerset, recorded in the Domesday Book as Meriet, 'boundary gate' in Old English”
The story
Merritt looks like a virtue and is actually a map reference: an English surname from Merriott in Somerset, recorded in the Domesday Book as Meriet, meaning boundary gate in Old English. The merit reading is a happy accident of spelling, and we decline to charge admission for it. As a first name it was a boys' pick first, 650 in the 1910s and 966 in the 1920s, then a long midcentury drift down. The girls' column arrived in earnest in the 1960s and held between 184 and 248 for four straight decades. By the 2000s the columns had crossed, 339 girls to 268 boys; the 2010s made it decisive, 944 to 692; since 2020 it stands 1,101 to 524. A boundary name crossing a boundary is almost too neat, but the figures are the figures. It scans as a surname pick with genuinely old records behind it, and it keeps Everett and Emmett good company.
How popular is Merritt around the world?
In the United States, 1,625 babies were named Merritt between 2020 and 2025.
Merritt is on the official records of the United States and Canada.
United States
1 in 13,000
In the United States, 1,625 babies were named Merritt between 2020 and 2025.
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Merritt peaked in the 2020s. In US birth records Merritt has stayed between 392 and 1,636 births in every decade since the 1950s: a name everyone knows and few children get.
Births with a Social Security record. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration
Canada
1 in 73,000
In Canada, 5 boys named Merritt were born in 2024, ranked 3,231st among boys that year.
The count never rose above 6 in a year, too few to chart.
First given names from provincial and territorial vital statistics across Canada; any name-sex-year under 5 is excluded at source, and small Quebec counts carry a randomized adjustment made at source. Shares divide by Statistics Canada’s count of live births for the year; the 2024 count is preliminary. Source: Statistics Canada, first names at birth (table 17-10-0147-01)
South Australia
last on record 1999
Merritt is not on the 2017 record for South Australia, whose registry publishes every name given that year.
The count never rose above 1 in a year, too few to chart.
Births registered in South Australia (not all of Australia) by first name and year of registration, 1944–2017, from the state’s Births, Deaths and Marriages registry, which publishes every name down to a single birth in capitals; a spelling its export repeats inside a year is counted once, and from 2018 only a top 100 is published, so the series ends at 2017. Source: Consumer and Business Services (South Australia), popular baby names
Not on the record in Spain, Mexico City, Argentina, Puerto Rico, England and Wales, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland and Poland: those registries withhold small counts, so rare uses may sit below their floors.
Not on the Chile record: nametree keeps spellings that reached 5 registrations in some year, so rarer uses are not shown. Not on the Montevideo record for 1940 to 2011: that registry withholds nothing, so this spelling was not given there in those years. Not on the France record: nametree keeps spellings that reached 20 births in some year, so rarer uses are not shown. Not on the Austria record for 1984 to 2025: Statistik Austria publishes every first name down to a single birth, so this name was not given there in those years (before 2010 the record covers babies with Austrian citizenship only). Not on Norway’s list: Statistics Norway lists only first names carried by 200 or more living people, so rarer names are not shown.
Keep exploring
The Merritt deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Merritt 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 Merritt fits with your family’s names and surname.
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