Humanverse

Mike vs Mikolaj

American parents have registered 206,523 Mikes since 1880, against 253 Mikolajs. Mike is still ahead, with 163 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Mike Mikolaj

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 2025, when Mike had 163 and Mikolaj had 16.

Side by side

  Mike Mikolaj
Total US births 206,523253
Most in one year 12,06917
Babies in 2025 16316
Estimated living today 132,000250
Median age today 6415
Peak year 19602007
Best rank 36th boys5,210th boys
Rank in 2025 1,231st5,608th
First recorded 18801994
Girls / boys 662 / 205,8610 / 253

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 Mikolajs are over 15. That is 49 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 Mikolaj
Poland 231116,899 MikoĊ‚aj
France 8,80570
England and Wales 3561,619
Belgium 1,43516
Ireland 139383
Norway 220229
Scotland 6152
Northern Ireland 350

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 Mikolaj.