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Calix vs Callum

American parents have registered 16,089 Callums since 1880, against 855 Calixes. Callum is still ahead, with 3,003 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Calix 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

Callum has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1983 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2005, when Calix had 18 and Callum had 104.

Side by side

  Calix Callum
Total US births 85516,089
Most in one year 753,003
Babies in 2025 753,003
Estimated living today 85016,000
Median age today 73
Peak year 20252025
Best rank 2,006th boys118th boys
Rank in 2025 2,006th118th
First recorded 20021983
Girls / boys 0 / 85538 / 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 Calixes alive today are over 7; half the Callums are over 3. That is 4 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 Calix Callum
England and Wales 5665,982
France 10060

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: Calix and Callum.