Humanverse

Mikael vs Mikhail

American parents have registered 6,239 Mikaels since 1880, against 4,158 Mikhails. Mikael is still ahead, with 176 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Mikael Mikhail

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, Mikael for 73 years and Mikhail for 8 years. The lead changed hands 6 times.

Side by side

  Mikael Mikhail
Total US births 6,2394,158
Most in one year 228143
Babies in 2025 17684
Estimated living today 6,0004,100
Median age today 1717
Peak year 20232015
Best rank 987th boys1,259th boys
Rank in 2025 1,169th1,867th
First recorded 19441968
Girls / boys 300 / 5,93924 / 4,134

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.

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 Mikhail
France 20,035365
England and Wales 967655
Switzerland 22157
Belgium 2615
Poland 63160
Ireland 148

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 Mikhail.