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Cailyn vs Cairo

American parents have registered 9,999 Cairos since 1880, against 5,554 Cailyns. Cairo is still ahead, with 1,000 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Cailyn against Cairo, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Cailyn Cairo

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 46 years in which either name was published, Cailyn for 32 years and Cairo for 14 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Cailyn Cairo
Total US births 5,5549,999
Most in one year 4011,157
Babies in 2025 451,000
Estimated living today 5,5009,900
Median age today 174
Peak year 20092022
Best rank 724th girls306th boys
Rank in 2025 3,712th341st
First recorded 19791979
Girls / boys 5,549 / 5584 / 9,415

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 Cailyns alive today are over 17; half the Cairos are over 4. That is 13 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 Cailyn Cairo
England and Wales 871,604
Scotland 3237
Ireland 57

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: Cailyn and Cairo.