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Mikael vs Mikkel

American parents have registered 6,239 Mikaels since 1880, against 906 Mikkels. Mikael is still ahead, with 176 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Mikael Mikkel

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 1947, when Mikael had 7 and Mikkel had 5.

Side by side

  Mikael Mikkel
Total US births 6,239906
Most in one year 22829
Babies in 2025 17617
Estimated living today 6,000880
Median age today 1721
Peak year 20232004
Best rank 987th boys3,285th boys
Rank in 2025 1,169th5,399th
First recorded 19441947
Girls / boys 300 / 5,93924 / 882

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 Mikkels alive today are over 21; half the Mikaels are over 17. 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 Mikkel
France 20,0355
Norway 3,1664,931
England and Wales 96756

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 Mikkel.