Humanverse

Mikaela vs Mike

American parents have registered 206,523 Mikes since 1880, against 20,719 Mikaelas. But in 2025 it was Mikaela that was commoner, 241 babies to 163.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Mikaela 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 113 years and Mikaela for 33 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Mikaela Mike
Total US births 20,719206,523
Most in one year 1,07112,069
Babies in 2025 241163
Estimated living today 20,000132,000
Median age today 2264
Peak year 19971960
Best rank 273rd girls36th boys
Rank in 2025 1,034th1,231st
First recorded 19661880
Girls / boys 20,719 / 0662 / 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 Mikaelas are over 22. That is 42 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 Mikaela Mike
France 4508,805
Belgium 191,435
England and Wales 565356
Ireland 155139
Poland 37231
Norway 12220
Scotland 656
Northern Ireland 33

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: Mikaela and Mike.