Humanverse

Mical vs Michele

American parents have registered 226,063 Micheles since 1880, against 523 Micals. Michele is still ahead, with 28 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Mical against Michele, 1880 to 2025 0 3k 6k 9k 12k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Mical Michele

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

Michele has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1905 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2022, when Mical had 9 and Michele had 40.

Side by side

  Mical Michele
Total US births 523226,063
Most in one year 2211,281
Babies in 2025 under 528
Estimated living today 490199,000
Median age today 3757
Peak year 19811968
Best rank 2,569th boys29th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked4,758th
First recorded 19461905
Girls / boys 193 / 330223,299 / 2,764

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 Micheles alive today are over 57; half the Micals are over 37. That is 20 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 Michele
England and Wales 7214

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 Michele.