Cali vs Calissa

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Cali Calissa

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 63 years in which either name was published, Cali for 62 years and Calissa for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

• 1959 Cali ahead
• 1962 Calissa ahead
• 1963–2025 Cali ahead

Side by side

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 Calissas alive today are over 19; half the Calis are over 11. That is 8 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Cali Nevada (2.5×), Florida (2.0×), Georgia (1.6×)
• Calissa California (7.9×)

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.

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

• Cali vs Caleb
• Cali vs Calvin
• Cali vs Callie
• Cali vs Callum
• Cali vs Callan
• Cali vs Callen
• Calissa vs Caleb
• Calissa vs Calvin