Humanverse

Makaila vs Makena

American parents have registered 6,652 Makenas since 1880, against 4,747 Makailas. Makena is still ahead, with 63 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Makaila against Makena, 1880 to 2025 0 100 200 300 400 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Makaila Makena

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, Makena for 28 years and Makaila for 15 years. The lead changed hands 13 times.

10 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Makaila Makena
Total US births 4,7476,652
Most in one year 310381
Babies in 2025 1263
Estimated living today 4,7006,600
Median age today 2017
Peak year 20072005
Best rank 893rd girls717th girls
Rank in 2025 8,362nd2,719th
First recorded 19791984
Girls / boys 4,747 / 06,568 / 84

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 Makailas alive today are over 20; half the Makenas are over 17. That is 3 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 Makaila Makena
England and Wales 1211

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: Makaila and Makena.