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Micha vs Micheal

American parents have registered 156,555 Micheals since 1880, against 2,366 Michas. Micheal is still ahead, with 130 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Micha Micheal

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

Micheal has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2022, when Micha had 37 and Micheal had 146.

Side by side

  Micha Micheal
Total US births 2,366156,555
Most in one year 624,861
Babies in 2025 30130
Estimated living today 2,300124,000
Median age today 2855
Peak year 19901957
Best rank 2,957th girls85th boys
Rank in 2025 11,932nd1,401st
First recorded 19551880
Girls / boys 1,196 / 1,1701,836 / 154,719

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 Micheals alive today are over 55; half the Michas are over 28. That is 27 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 Micha Micheal
Ireland 32,359
England and Wales 178427
France 22535

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: Micha and Micheal.