Merlene

Where Merlene comes from

Merlene hasn't made it into the dictionaries we draw on, and nobody well known enough for an encyclopedia has carried it yet — so for now its story is the one the SSA record tells. Names that spell a familiar sound a new way often live here for a while before anyone writes them down.

  • Vowel-ended
Along the way
  1. 1913
    First appearance
    #3,187 among girls, 5 babies — the first year at least five got the name.
  2. 1940
    Peak, #721
    93 babies named Merlene — more than any year before or since.
  3. 1952
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births — down to #1,454.
  4. 1960
    Merlene Ottey born
    Jamaican-born Slovenian track athlete
  5. 1973
    Merlene Frazer born
    Jamaican athletics competitor
In the dictionary

No dictionary entry for this spelling — which is its own kind of rare.

Namesakes
  • Merlene Ottey · Jamaican-born Slovenian track athlete, born 1960
  • Merlene Frazer · Jamaican athletics competitor, born 1973

Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.