Humanverse

Micaela vs Micah

American parents have registered 133,606 Micahs since 1880, against 14,983 Micaelas. Micah is still ahead, with 4,108 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Micaela against Micah, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Micaela Micah

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 122 years in which either name was published, Micah for 70 years and Micaela for 52 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Micaela Micah
Total US births 14,983133,606
Most in one year 5854,246
Babies in 2025 1744,108
Estimated living today 14,000131,000
Median age today 2616
Peak year 19952022
Best rank 439th girls89th boys
Rank in 2025 1,285th90th
First recorded 18951946
Girls / boys 14,977 / 614,035 / 119,571

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 Micaelas alive today are over 26; half the Micahs are over 16. That is 10 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 Micaela Micah
England and Wales 2394,146
France 320195
Switzerland 11472
Ireland 1470

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: Micaela and Micah.