Maeve is one syllable long and still carries a whole story. It reads as steady rather than delicate, which is why it keeps landing on shortlists beside Nora, Sloane, and Wren instead of beside Lily or Rose. Nothing about it is frilly, yet it is unmistakably feminine.
The name is the English spelling of the Old Irish Medb, borne by the warrior queen of Connacht who started a war over a bull. Its root meaning, she who intoxicates, points at a ruler’s hold over a room rather than anything in a cup, and the same root gives a second reading: she who rules.
The federal birth records add a detail most parents miss. Maeve has been on the American list since 1940, yet half of every US Maeve ever counted had been born by 2020. It is a young name wearing very old clothes.
Verdict: Maeve is a strong pick for a baby born in 2026, but it is no longer a hidden one. It sat at No. 76 in the United States in 2025, three places off its best position ever, and No. 26 in England and Wales, so your daughter will meet another Maeve sooner or later. What she gets in exchange is a name nobody has to spell twice, sitting on more history than almost anything else this short.
Maeve Overview
- Meaning: Maeve means she who intoxicates in Old Irish, from a root that also yields she who rules.
- Gender: Maeve is a feminine name in every country that tracks it, with no measurable use for boys.
- Origin: Irish. Maeve is the Anglicized form of Medb, the mythological queen of Connacht, built on the Proto-Celtic root medu- (mead). Handing a king mead was the ritual act that granted him the land, which is how a word for honey wine came to mean sovereignty.
- Pronunciation: MAYV, written /meɪv/, one syllable, rhyming with brave.
- Popularity: No. 76 for American girls in 2025, No. 60 in Ireland and No. 26 in England and Wales the same year. Half of every US Maeve on record had been born by 2020.
- Nicknames: Mae, May, Maevey, Mavy, Vee, Eve, Evie, Mae-Mae, Queenie.
- Variations: Meadhbh, Méabh, Méabha, Méibh, Medb, Meave, Mave.
- Namesakes: Maeve Binchy, Maeve Higgins, Maeve Dermody, Maeve Kinkead, Maeve Quinlan, Maeve Kennedy McKean.
What Does Maeve Mean?
Maeve means she who intoxicates, which sounds like an odd thing to hand a newborn until you know what the Irish were actually describing.
The word behind it is mid, Old Irish for mead, the honey wine poured at royal ceremonies. Scholars trace the name to the Proto-Celtic root medu-, mead, though a second candidate root, medwa, simply means ruler. Both readings land in the same place. At an Irish inauguration, a woman standing in for the sovereignty of the land offered the incoming king a drink, and accepting it made him king. The woman who poured was the one who decided, so she who intoxicates and she who rules are two descriptions of a single job.
Read that way, the meaning has nothing to do with drinking and everything to do with authority. It describes a person whose presence changes the temperature of a room. Older interpretations soften it further to the cause of great joy, which is the same charisma seen from the guest’s side of the table.
Where Does the Name Maeve Come From?
Maeve is the Anglicized form of the Old Irish name Medb, and its history is literally legendary.
Medb was queen of Connacht in the Ulster Cycle, the body of myth that includes Ireland’s closest thing to a national epic. In the Táin Bó Cúailnge, the Cattle Raid of Cooley, she discovers that her husband Ailill owns one prize bull she cannot match, and rather than concede the point she raises an army to take the great brown bull of Cooley from Ulster. The teenage hero Cúchulainn holds off that entire army alone in single combat at a run of river fords. She gets the bull and loses the war, which is a fair summary of her whole character: relentless, calculating, and unwilling to come second to a husband.
Medieval scholars read her as more than a queen. The mead ritual and her habit of choosing kings led Tomás Ó Máille to argue in 1928 that Medb is the sovereignty of Connacht in human form, married ceremonially by each new ruler. Tradition even gives her a grave you can walk to: a cairn roughly 40 feet high on the summit of Knocknarea in County Sligo, where she is said to stand upright inside the stones, still facing her Ulster enemies.
The spelling traveled a long way to reach us. Medieval Irish wrote it Medb, later Irish added the silent letters that mark lenition and produced Meadhbh, and modern Irish trimmed it back to Méabh. English speakers, faced with a word where dh and bh both do the work of a v, wrote down what they heard, and Maeve is the result (1).
How Popular Is the Name Maeve?
Maeve is a top-100 American girls’ name, and it got there in a hurry. The Social Security Administration has listed it in 81 of the 86 years since 1940, and 29,608 US girls have carried it across that entire record (2).
The flat stretch on the left is most of the name’s American life. Maeve sat in the records for six decades without ever becoming a name you heard at a playground. The line lifts in the 1990s, and the steep part is recent: across the last ten years Maeve’s share of US girl births has run close to four times its rate over the ten years before.
2025 is the tallest point on that chart, with 3,153 girls named Maeve, roughly one girl in every 510. Its best US position came two years earlier, at No. 73 in 2023, and it now sits at No. 76. Slipping three places while the count keeps growing means the names above it grew faster, not that Maeve is fading.
Outside the United States the same climb runs harder. Maeve reached No. 60 in Ireland in 2025, up from No. 99 in 2020, and No. 26 in England and Wales, up from No. 94 across those same five years. All three national rankings now run through 2025, so the comparison is like for like. Irish parents have used the name for centuries, but the current surge is recent everywhere, and it is strongest in England rather than in Ireland.
One figure places the name better than any position on a list. Half of every American Maeve ever recorded had been born by 2020, which means the other half arrived in the five years after that. Your daughter will not share this name with anyone’s grandmother. She will share it with the children in her own class.
For a parent choosing in 2026, that cuts two ways. Maeve will not sound dated for a long time, and nobody will need it spelled twice. It also will not be unusual. Plan for a second Maeve in the class photo, and pick a middle name that gives her a way to stand apart.
How Do I Pronounce Maeve?
Maeve is pronounced MAYV, written /meɪv/. It is one syllable and rhymes with brave, wave, and save.
The Anglicized spelling was invented to solve a pronunciation problem, and it works. Almost no English speaker hesitates over Maeve, and it survives a phone call, a substitute teacher, and a coffee shop counter without correction.
The traditional spelling is where people stumble. In Irish, both dh and bh are lenited consonants that soften toward a v sound, so Meadhbh and Méabh are pronounced almost identically to Maeve despite looking nothing like it. If you love the Irish spelling, know that you are signing up to say it aloud on every form for the rest of your child’s life.
Is Maeve a Boy or Girl Name?
Maeve is a feminine name, and the data is unusually clean on the point. The federal birth records carry no boys’ entry for Maeve in any year they cover, so there is no male column to report, and every naming authority that tracks the name lists it as a girl’s name only.
That is a straightforward consequence of where it came from. The name belonged to a queen and, in the older reading, to a goddess of sovereignty, and it never developed a masculine counterpart the way many Irish names did.
Its sound would not stop it from crossing over, since it sits close to Dave and Tate, and it does get chosen for non-binary children. But there is no data trend to point at here, only the possibility.
Variations of Maeve
The Irish forms are the real variants; most other spellings are English attempts at the same sound.
- Medb (Medieval Irish), the original written form found in the myths.
- Meadhbh (traditional Modern Irish), the spelling still used on Irish birth certificates.
- Méabh and Méabha (contemporary Irish), the simplified spellings now preferred in Ireland.
- Méibh (Irish), a less common written variant.
- Meave and Mave (English), older Anglicizations that predate the Maeve spelling.
- Maeva (French), a separate name that means welcome in Tahitian and arrived in France through Polynesia, so it looks related but is not.
Nicknames for Maeve
One-syllable names resist shortening, so most Maeve nicknames work by stretching the name out rather than cutting it down.
- Mae or May: the obvious short form, and the one most families land on.
- Eve or Evie: pulled from the back half of the name instead of the front.
- Vee: crisp, modern, and useful if an older sibling already claimed Mae.
- Mavy or Maevey: the softened toddler versions that tend to appear on their own.
- Mae-Mae: a doubled baby nickname most children outgrow by school age.
- Queenie: a rarer, teasing nod to Connacht, best kept inside the family.
- Mavis: an uncommon elaboration that borrows a whole separate vintage name.
Names Similar to Maeve
If Maeve is close but not quite it, these share one of its three defining traits: Irish roots, one strong syllable, or a mythological namesake.
- Niamh (Neev): the closest match on every axis, Irish, one syllable, and from the same body of myth, where Niamh rides to the Otherworld with Oisín. It means bright.
- Freya: the Norse parallel to Maeve, a goddess name carrying power rather than sweetness.
- Sloane: another one-syllable Irish-derived name with the same unfussy confidence.
- Avery: shares the V sound and the soft-but-strong feel, though it reads far more modern and unisex.
- Wren: matches Maeve’s brevity exactly, swapping mythology for the natural world.
- Ivy: short, botanical, and vintage, with a similar refusal to be frilly.
- Blair: Scottish rather than Irish, but built on the same one-syllable formula.
- June: a vintage single-syllable classic for parents who want warmth instead of edge.
- Nell: compact, old-fashioned, and quietly Irish by way of Eleanor.
Those are the matches by sound and shape. The birth data produces a different list, and it is the one that tells you how Maeve will age.
Names That Moved With Maeve
Set Maeve’s share of US girl births against every other girls’ name of the last 45 years, year by year, and a handful of them trace almost the same line. That is a signal about era and taste rather than about sound, which is the part a list of rhymes cannot give you.
Six names track Maeve most closely in the federal birth records: Noa, Navy, Raya, Millie, Oakley, and Sutton. This is our own reading of public birth data rather than a list the Social Security Administration endorses, and not one of them rhymes with Maeve.
- Noa: the closest match of the six. Like Maeve, its biggest year on record is 2025, and that is also where its best position sits, at No. 226. Both are still climbing rather than leveling off.
- Navy: a much newer name that reached its own best year in 2025 at No. 327, bending upward at the same points Maeve does.
- Raya: crested a couple of years early, at No. 353 in 2023, and sits at No. 369 in 2025 on a curve that climbed through the same decade.
- Millie: the one peer that shares Maeve’s altitude as well as its shape. It reached No. 73 in 2025, its best year yet, so a Maeve and a Millie in the same class is now ordinary.
- Oakley: hit its best position first, No. 153 in 2023, then eased to No. 156 by 2025. That is Maeve’s own pattern in miniature: best year in 2023, a few places back since.
- Sutton: the quietest of the group, at its own high point of No. 181 in 2025 after climbing on the same schedule.
Only the three closest are drawn above, so do not go looking for the other lines. Start here if you want a sister’s name that will not sound like it arrived from a different decade, and read the whole list as a preview of the names Maeve will share a class list with.
Middle Names for Maeve
A single-syllable first name wants a longer middle name behind it. Two or three syllables give the full name a rhythm; matching Maeve with another one-beat name tends to sound clipped when it is called across a yard.
Classic & Elegant
Nature & Boho
Short & Punchy
Irish & Ancestral
- Maeve Siobhán
- Maeve Aisling
- Maeve Bridget
- Maeve Roisin
- Maeve Orla
Sibling Names for Maeve
Maeve sets a clear style for a sibling set: short, grounded, and either Irish or vintage. Names that are ornate or heavily trending in a different direction tend to sound like they came from another family.
For a Brother
- Declan: an Irish saint’s name that matches Maeve’s heritage and its popularity curve almost exactly.
- Finn: one syllable, Irish, and drawn from the same myth cycles.
- Jude: gentle in sound but not soft, and the same length.
- Silas: vintage rather than Irish, useful if you want the sibling set to feel old instead of Gaelic.
- Rowan: nature-inspired and unisex, a softer landing beside a strong sister name.
- Cormac: an Irish name out of the old king legends, for parents leaning fully into the mythology.
For a Sister
- Nora: the most natural pairing, Anglicized Irish, two syllables against Maeve’s one.
- Clara: vintage and clear, with the same absence of frills.
- Eloise: adds French softness so the set does not read as one note.
- Hazel: earthy and old-fashioned, a warmer counterweight.
- Iris: a flower name with a goddess behind it, which is the Maeve trick in a different mythology.
- Orla: Irish, uncommon in the United States, and built on the same short and strong pattern.
Famous People Named Maeve
- Maeve Binchy: the Irish novelist behind Circle of Friends and Tara Road, whose warm village storytelling made her one of Ireland’s best-selling writers. She was born Anne Maeve Binchy.
- Maeve Higgins: an Irish comedian, writer, and podcaster based in New York.
- Maeve Dermody: an Australian actress who works mainly in thrillers and period drama.
- Maeve Kinkead: an American actress with a long run on the soap opera Guiding Light.
- Maeve Quinlan: an American actress.
- Maeve Kennedy McKean: a human rights attorney and public health official from the Kennedy family, who died in 2020.
Maeve in Pop Culture
Screenwriters reach for Maeve when a character needs to read as clever and slightly dangerous, and that screen run overlaps the name’s steepest climb.
- Maeve Wiley in Netflix’s Sex Education: the guarded, sharp protagonist who introduced the name to a whole generation of viewers.
- Maeve Millay in HBO’s Westworld: an android whose entire arc is seizing control from the people who built her, which lands close to the original meaning.
- Queen Maeve in Amazon’s The Boys: a warrior figure named directly after the Irish queen.
- Queen Maeve in Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass novels: an immortal fae ruler, again borrowing the sovereignty association.
