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Caila vs Cailyn

American parents have registered 5,554 Cailyns since 1880, against 1,276 Cailas. Cailyn is still ahead, with 45 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Caila against Cailyn, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Caila Cailyn

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 45 years in which either name was published, Cailyn for 40 years and Caila for 5 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Caila Cailyn
Total US births 1,2765,554
Most in one year 66401
Babies in 2025 1445
Estimated living today 1,3005,500
Median age today 2517
Peak year 19992009
Best rank 2,258th girls724th girls
Rank in 2025 7,491st3,712th
First recorded 19851979
Girls / boys 1,276 / 05,549 / 5

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Cailas alive today are over 25; half the Cailyns are over 17. That is 8 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Caila Cailyn
England and Wales 1987
Scotland 632
Northern Ireland 143
Ireland 35

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Caila and Cailyn.