Humanverse

Mical vs Michaela

American parents have registered 53,702 Michaelas since 1880, against 523 Micals. Michaela is still ahead, with 323 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Mical against Michaela, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Mical Michaela

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

Michaela has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1921 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1975, when Mical had 19 and Michaela had 120.

Side by side

  Mical Michaela
Total US births 52353,702
Most in one year 223,405
Babies in 2025 under 5323
Estimated living today 49052,000
Median age today 3727
Peak year 19811997
Best rank 2,569th boys100th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked841st
First recorded 19461921
Girls / boys 193 / 33053,633 / 69

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 Michaelas are over 27. That is 10 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 Mical Michaela
England and Wales 73,763

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: Mical and Michaela.