Humanverse

Micah vs Mical

American parents have registered 133,606 Micahs since 1880, against 523 Micals. Micah is still ahead, with 4,108 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Micah Mical

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

Micah has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1946 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1946, when Micah had 5 and Mical had 5.

Side by side

  Micah Mical
Total US births 133,606523
Most in one year 4,24622
Babies in 2025 4,108under 5
Estimated living today 131,000490
Median age today 1637
Peak year 20221981
Best rank 89th boys2,569th boys
Rank in 2025 90thunranked
First recorded 19461946
Girls / boys 14,035 / 119,571193 / 330

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 Micals alive today are over 37; half the Micahs are over 16. That is 21 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Micah Mical
England and Wales 4,1467

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: Micah and Mical.