Humanverse

Mika vs Mike

American parents have registered 206,523 Mikes since 1880, against 8,114 Mikas. Mike is still ahead, with 163 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Mika against Mike, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Mika Mike

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

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Mike for 137 years and Mika for 9 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Mika Mike
Total US births 8,114206,523
Most in one year 24412,069
Babies in 2025 161163
Estimated living today 7,900132,000
Median age today 1964
Peak year 20171960
Best rank 1,198th girls36th boys
Rank in 2025 1,631st1,231st
First recorded 19541880
Girls / boys 6,752 / 1,362662 / 205,861

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 Mikes alive today are over 64; half the Mikas are over 19. That is 45 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 Mika Mike
France 8608,805
Switzerland 1,1231,305
Belgium 4591,435
England and Wales 924356
Norway 327220
Poland 198231
Scotland 146

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: Mika and Mike.