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Michaella vs Micheal

American parents have registered 156,555 Micheals since 1880, against 2,309 Michaellas. Micheal is still ahead, with 130 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Michaella 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 2025, when Michaella had 34 and Micheal had 130.

Side by side

  Michaella Micheal
Total US births 2,309156,555
Most in one year 1414,861
Babies in 2025 34130
Estimated living today 2,300124,000
Median age today 2755
Peak year 19971957
Best rank 1,261st girls85th boys
Rank in 2025 4,172nd1,401st
First recorded 19411880
Girls / boys 2,309 / 01,836 / 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 Michaellas are over 27. That is 28 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 Michaella Micheal
Ireland 612,359
England and Wales 214427
France 39535
Scotland 2825

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: Michaella and Micheal.