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Mikael vs Mikail

American parents have registered 6,239 Mikaels since 1880, against 1,243 Mikails. Mikael is still ahead, with 176 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Mikael against Mikail, 1880 to 2025 0 60 120 180 240 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Mikael Mikail

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

Mikael has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1944 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2003, when Mikael had 99 and Mikail had 34.

Side by side

  Mikael Mikail
Total US births 6,2391,243
Most in one year 22852
Babies in 2025 17647
Estimated living today 6,0001,200
Median age today 1713
Peak year 20232016
Best rank 987th boys2,437th boys
Rank in 2025 1,169th2,718th
First recorded 19441984
Girls / boys 300 / 5,93915 / 1,228

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 Mikaels alive today are over 17; half the Mikails are over 13. That is 4 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 Mikail
France 20,0353,480
Norway 3,166223
England and Wales 9671,039
Belgium 261814
Switzerland 221221
Poland 6320
Scotland 139
Ireland 143

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 Mikail.