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National Marilyn Day

Next celebratedTuesday, August 17, 2027

Mary Ellen Reynolds assembled the name for herself on Broadway, joining her own first name to her mother's middle name, Lynn. August 17 belongs to every Marilyn since, Norma Jeane Dougherty included.

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Last updated September 6, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEAugust 17
OBSERVED INInternationally
CATEGORYCulture
SUBCATEGORYFamous People
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
Not documented
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

The earliest trace is a listing, not an announcement.

No founder, founding organisation or establishing act has been documented for National Marilyn Day. It appears on one large holiday registry and is absent from two others whose archives were checked, and the only dated evidence is a third-party listing rather than an announcement by anyone claiming to have created the day.

+ Know the story? Submit a founder Help us complete this holiday
INTRO

Britain counts 1,550 hills called Marilyn

In Britain, a Marilyn is not a woman. It is a hill.

National Marilyn Day belongs to everyone who carries the name. The name itself has a second life that almost nobody outside British hillwalking knows about, and the rule behind it has nothing to do with height. Any summit qualifies if it rises at least 150 metres above the ground on every side.

Alan Dawson's revised edition, published in 2025, counts 1,550 Marilyns in Great Britain. The joke is in the sound. Scotland's older list of 3,000-foot peaks is the Munros, and the society that maintains the newer list says the pun was deliberate.

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ORIGINS

Marilyn Day history

INTRODUCTION

Mary Ellen Reynolds was born in Evansville, Indiana, in 1898. By the time she reached Broadway she was working under a name she had assembled herself, taking the Mary from her own first name and the ending from her mother's middle name, Lynn. The result was Marilyn Miller.

Almost nobody had been called that before her. The name stayed a curiosity in America for two decades after it first appeared.

CHAPTER 01

A stage name that spread

Miller was a Broadway star of the Ziegfeld Follies, and her name travelled with her. She died in New York in April 1936, aged 37. Behind the Name credits her with popularising the name in part.

In the American birth records, Marilyn became popular during the 1920s. It reached 13th in the United States in 1936, and held that rank the following year.

CHAPTER 02

The studio picks a name

In 1946 a model signed with Twentieth Century-Fox under her married name, Norma Jeane Dougherty. On the account TIME relays from the biographer Donald Spoto, the executive Ben Lyon objected that Dougherty had too many possible pronunciations. Lyon supplied Marilyn, because she reminded him of Marilyn Miller.

She chose the surname herself, another name from her mother's side of the family. The new name was hers professionally within weeks. It did not become hers legally until 1956.

CHAPTER 03

The hills take the name

Alan Dawson published The Relative Hills of Britain in 1992 and defined a category that needed no opinion about which bumps counted as separate hills. He set the bar at 150 metres of drop, following the 500-foot rule J. Rooke Corbett had used for his own Scottish list. The Relative Hills Society calls it the first hill list to cover the whole of Britain from sea level upwards.

CHAPTER 04

The listing came first

National Marilyn Day has no comparable record. No founder, organisation or founding act has been documented for it, and two large holiday registries have no archived page for it at all. The earliest dated trace of the day is a listing captured online in August 2022, which sets a floor on when it was circulating rather than a date when it began.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Marilyn Day

TOPOGRAPHY

Four people had climbed every Marilyn by 2015.

Hills are promoted into the Marilyn list and demoted out of it as surveyors re-measure them, and the database that holds the data publishes a dated register of the changes. When Dawson wrote about the list in 2015, four people had climbed all of them.

RECORD

Young enough to be fully documented

American birth records begin in 1880, and Marilyn is not in them at the start. The name is recent enough that its entire American record, from first appearance to now, sits in that one dataset.

WEATHER

One naming system has retired it

The National Hurricane Center lists Marilyn among the Atlantic storm names retired after the 1995 season. A retired name is never used again.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Marilyn Day by the Numbers

5
US girls named Marilyn in 1899
11,881
US girls named Marilyn in 1947
356
US girls named Marilyn in 2025
373,791
US girls recorded as Marilyn since 1880
202 of 282
Munros that are also Marilyns

TIMELINE

Timeline

First Marilyns on record

The name enters the United States national birth records, absent from every earlier year.

Highest American rank

Marilyn reaches 13th in the United States, the highest it has ever placed.

Fox goes looking for a name

Norma Jeane Dougherty signs with Twentieth Century-Fox in August, and the search for a stage name begins.

The name becomes legal

Marilyn Monroe becomes her legal name in February, a decade after she began using it professionally.

Dawson defines the Marilyns

The Relative Hills of Britain sets out a category defined by drop rather than by height.

Revised edition published

Dawson's revised edition updates the list and includes 99 Submarilyns, hills that fall short by up to 10 metres.
Dear Ben, You found me, named me and believed in me when no one else did. My thanks and love forever. Marilyn
Marilyn MonroeInscribed on a photograph given to Ben Lyon
Alan has said that Marilyns are an intentional pun reference to Munros based on the film star, 'Marilyn Monroe', although he doesn't expand on this in the book. We will leave you to draw your own conclusions.
Relative Hills SocietyMaintains the Marilyn hill lists

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Marilyn Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Climb a Marilyn this weekend

Pick a summit from the list and walk up it, whatever its height. The full list is mapped by topographic area, so there is almost certainly one within reach.

WATCH

Watch a Monroe film from 1953

Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire all reached cinemas that year. Pick one, or watch all three in a row.

ASK

Ask a Marilyn how she got her name

The name is barely more than a century old in America, so its chain of namesakes is short enough to trace. Ask, and you may get a grandmother, a Broadway dancer, or a film.

LOOK

Look up the name in America's birth records

The Social Security Administration publishes a file for every year since 1880. Find the year Marilyn first appears, then find the year your own name did.

LOG

Log your ascents with the hill database

The Database of British and Irish Hills was founded in 2001 and offers logging facilities for baggers. Register, record the hills you have climbed, and watch the tally build.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Marilyn Day?

1 / 8

In British hillwalking, what is a Marilyn?

Answer

No. No US federal instrument creates or recognises it, and no official status was found elsewhere, so it is a normal working day.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

11sources
7primary records
5independently dated
Primary records
Pedantic Press2025-06
The Revised Relative Hills of Britain: The Marilyns
Alan Dawson's own page for the 2025 edition, with the British total.
View source
Database of British and Irish Hills
The Marilyns
The working list itself, with the 150 metre prominence rule and a mapped index.
View source
Database of British and Irish Hills
Database notes
How the hill database is built, maintained and logged by baggers since 2001.
View source
US Social Security Administration2025
Popular baby names: national data
One file of names and counts for every US birth year since 1880.
View source
NOAA National Hurricane Center
Tropical cyclone naming history and retired names
The official table of Atlantic storm names withdrawn from rotation, by year.
View source
Relative Hills Society2025-08
The Marilyns of Great Britain hill list
The society's guide to the list, the 150 metre threshold and the name's pun.
View source
The Munro Society2015-12
The Full House and the Metric Landscape, by Alan Dawson
Dawson on his four metric hill categories and who has completed them.
View source
Additional coverage
Behind the Name
Meaning, origin and history of the name Marilyn
Traces Marilyn to Mary plus the suffix lyn, and to the stage star Marilyn Miller.
View source
TIME2018
How Marilyn Monroe Got Her Name and the Photo That Proves It
The 1946 studio naming, the 1956 legal change, and Monroe's inscription to Ben Lyon.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Marilyn Monroe
Her birth name and dates, her marriages, and the run of 1953 films.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Marilyn Miller
The Broadway star born Mary Ellen Reynolds in Evansville, Indiana, in 1898.
View source
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