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Calley vs Callie

American parents have registered 70,827 Callies since 1880, against 956 Calleys. Callie is still ahead, with 1,754 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Calley against Callie, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Calley Callie

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

Callie 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 1971, when Calley had 17 and Callie had 139.

Side by side

  Calley Callie
Total US births 95670,827
Most in one year 411,763
Babies in 2025 71,754
Estimated living today 93055,000
Median age today 3117
Peak year 19902014
Best rank 2,799th girls186th girls
Rank in 2025 11,932nd175th
First recorded 19701880
Girls / boys 956 / 070,190 / 637

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 Calleys alive today are over 31; half the Callies are over 17. That is 14 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 Calley Callie
England and Wales 174,045
Scotland 171,066

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: Calley and Callie.