Humanverse

Miles vs Miley

American parents have registered 123,225 Mileses since 1880, against 15,779 Mileys. Miles is still ahead, with 6,085 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Miles against Miley, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Miles Miley

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, Miles for 145 years and Miley for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Miles Miley
Total US births 123,22515,779
Most in one year 6,6552,652
Babies in 2025 6,085900
Estimated living today 112,00016,000
Median age today 1114
Peak year 20242008
Best rank 37th boys128th girls
Rank in 2025 44th338th
First recorded 18801889
Girls / boys 357 / 122,86815,704 / 75

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 Mileys alive today are over 14; half the Mileses are over 11. That is 3 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 Miles Miley
England and Wales 9,6344,492
Scotland 396419
France 285390
Belgium 167329
Ireland 187122
Northern Ireland 62225
Switzerland 22158
Poland 75

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: Miles and Miley.