Humanverse

Calise vs Calvin

American parents have registered 222,287 Calvins since 1880, against 510 Calises. Calvin is still ahead, with 2,717 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Calise against Calvin, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Calise Calvin

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

Calvin has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2008, when Calise had 30 and Calvin had 1,630.

Side by side

  Calise Calvin
Total US births 510222,287
Most in one year 324,940
Babies in 2025 162,717
Estimated living today 510148,000
Median age today 1338
Peak year 20151924
Best rank 4,403rd girls44th boys
Rank in 2025 6,838th132nd
First recorded 19791880
Girls / boys 510 / 01,223 / 221,064

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 Calvins alive today are over 38; half the Calises are over 13. That is 25 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

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

Country Calise Calvin
England and Wales 232,663

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: Calise and Calvin.