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Makai vs Makana

American parents have registered 9,609 Makais since 1880, against 860 Makanas. Makai is still ahead, with 626 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Makai against Makana, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Makai Makana

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 35 years in which either name was published, Makai for 30 years and Makana for 5 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Makai Makana
Total US births 9,609860
Most in one year 62643
Babies in 2025 62625
Estimated living today 9,500850
Median age today 816
Peak year 20252016
Best rank 481st boys3,681st boys
Rank in 2025 481st5,045th
First recorded 19891986
Girls / boys 311 / 9,298343 / 517

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 Makanas alive today are over 16; half the Makais are over 8. That is 8 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 Makai Makana
England and Wales 3603

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: Makai and Makana.