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Micheal vs Michela

American parents have registered 156,555 Micheals since 1880, against 2,217 Michelas. Micheal is still ahead, with 130 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Micheal Michela

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 1911, when Micheal had 38 and Michela had 5.

Side by side

  Micheal Michela
Total US births 156,5552,217
Most in one year 4,86199
Babies in 2025 1308
Estimated living today 124,0002,100
Median age today 5529
Peak year 19571998
Best rank 85th boys1,636th girls
Rank in 2025 1,401st10,917th
First recorded 18801911
Girls / boys 1,836 / 154,7192,217 / 0

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 Michelas are over 29. That is 26 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 Micheal Michela
Ireland 2,35913
England and Wales 42797
France 35145
Poland 2 Mícheál37
Scotland 2510

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: Micheal and Michela.