Humanverse

Mike vs Mikhael

American parents have registered 206,523 Mikes since 1880, against 1,171 Mikhaels. Mike is still ahead, with 163 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Mike Mikhael

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

Mike has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2020, when Mike had 168 and Mikhael had 65.

Side by side

  Mike Mikhael
Total US births 206,5231,171
Most in one year 12,06965
Babies in 2025 16348
Estimated living today 132,0001,100
Median age today 6411
Peak year 19602020
Best rank 36th boys2,139th boys
Rank in 2025 1,231st2,676th
First recorded 18801963
Girls / boys 662 / 205,8618 / 1,163

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 Mikhaels are over 11. That is 53 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 Mike Mikhael
France 8,805395
England and Wales 356144
Poland 2312
Ireland 1398

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: Mike and Mikhael.