Humanverse

Micheal vs Mickaela

American parents have registered 156,555 Micheals since 1880, against 509 Mickaelas. Micheal is still ahead, with 130 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Micheal Mickaela

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 Micheal had 146 and Mickaela had 12.

Side by side

  Micheal Mickaela
Total US births 156,555509
Most in one year 4,86148
Babies in 2025 130under 5
Estimated living today 124,000500
Median age today 5526
Peak year 19571997
Best rank 85th boys2,622nd girls
Rank in 2025 1,401stunranked
First recorded 18801985
Girls / boys 1,836 / 154,719509 / 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 Mickaelas are over 26. That is 29 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 Micheal Mickaela
Ireland 2,3598
France 35725
England and Wales 4276

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 Mickaela.