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Calen vs Callum

American parents have registered 16,089 Callums since 1880, against 2,720 Calens. Callum is still ahead, with 3,003 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Calen against Callum, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Calen Callum

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 49 years in which either name was published, Callum for 30 years and Calen for 19 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Calen Callum
Total US births 2,72016,089
Most in one year 1083,003
Babies in 2025 353,003
Estimated living today 2,70016,000
Median age today 203
Peak year 20112025
Best rank 1,533rd boys118th boys
Rank in 2025 3,314th118th
First recorded 19771983
Girls / boys 226 / 2,49438 / 16,051

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 Calens alive today are over 20; half the Callums are over 3. That is 17 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 Calen Callum
England and Wales 9265,982
Scotland 312,703
France 2560

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: Calen and Callum.