Humanverse

Calleigh vs Callum

American parents have registered 16,089 Callums since 1880, against 2,258 Calleighs. Callum is still ahead, with 3,003 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Calleigh 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 43 years in which either name was published, Callum for 40 years and Calleigh for 3 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Calleigh Callum
Total US births 2,25816,089
Most in one year 3353,003
Babies in 2025 183,003
Estimated living today 2,20016,000
Median age today 153
Peak year 20092025
Best rank 834th girls118th boys
Rank in 2025 6,325th118th
First recorded 19911983
Girls / boys 2,258 / 038 / 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 Calleighs alive today are over 15; half the Callums are over 3. That is 12 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 Calleigh Callum
England and Wales 17165,982
Scotland 3612,703
Ireland 124,883
Northern Ireland 32,567
France 560

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: Calleigh and Callum.