Humanverse

Caila vs Cain

American parents have registered 7,628 Cains since 1880, against 1,276 Cailas. Cain is still ahead, with 185 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Caila against Cain, 1880 to 2025 0 100 200 300 400 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Caila Cain

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

Cain has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1910 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1991, when Caila had 45 and Cain had 45.

Side by side

  Caila Cain
Total US births 1,2767,628
Most in one year 66330
Babies in 2025 14185
Estimated living today 1,3007,400
Median age today 2513
Peak year 19992014
Best rank 2,258th girls727th boys
Rank in 2025 7,491st1,141st
First recorded 19851910
Girls / boys 1,276 / 00 / 7,628

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 Cains are over 13. That is 12 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 Cain
England and Wales 192,117
Northern Ireland 14183
Scotland 6164
Ireland 3158
France 15 Caïla50 Caïn

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 Cain.