Humanverse

Mikael vs Mikaela

American parents have registered 20,719 Mikaelas since 1880, against 6,239 Mikaels. Mikaela is still ahead, with 241 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Mikael against Mikaela, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Mikael Mikaela

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 81 years in which either name was published, Mikaela for 44 years and Mikael for 37 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Mikael Mikaela
Total US births 6,23920,719
Most in one year 2281,071
Babies in 2025 176241
Estimated living today 6,00020,000
Median age today 1722
Peak year 20231997
Best rank 987th boys273rd girls
Rank in 2025 1,169th1,034th
First recorded 19441966
Girls / boys 300 / 5,93920,719 / 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 Mikaelas alive today are over 22; half the Mikaels are over 17. That is 5 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 Mikael Mikaela
France 20,035450
Norway 3,16612
Sweden 1,1001,490
England and Wales 967565
Italy 417391
Belgium 26119
Ireland 14155
Poland 6337
Scotland 1365

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: Mikael and Mikaela.