Caleb
Caleb reached its high-water mark in 2002 at number 35, and has been recorded 325,003 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 58th. About 317,000 Calebs are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 19.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Caleb boys named Caleb
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 325,003
- Estimated living today
- 317,000
- Median age today
- 19
- Peak year
- 2002
- Best rank
- 35th
- Rank in 2025
- 58th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 653 / 324,350
How old the living Calebs are
born that year still alive today
Of the 325,003 babies given the name since 1880, about 317,000 are alive — 98 in every hundred. Roughly 141,000 of them are children and 510 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2006 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Hebrew
From Latin Caleb, Calebus, from Koine Greek Χάλεβ, from Biblical Hebrew כָּלֵב, possibly related to כֶּלֶב (“dog”), referring to the unconditional devotion of dogs to their masters.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Calebs
- Caleb Landry Jones (born 1989)American actor
- Caleb Yirenkyi (born 2006)Ghanaian footballer
- Charles Caleb Colton (1780–1832)British priest and writer
- Caleb Ewan (born 1994)Australian road and track bicycle racer
- George Caleb Bingham (1811–1879)American artist
- Caleb Bradham (1867–1934)American pharmacist, inventor of Pepsi-Cola
- Caleb Deschanel (born 1944)American cinematographer and director of film and television
- Caleb Cushing (1800–1879)American politician
People named Caleb with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Caleb is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Caleb is most concentrated in Alaska (2.3×), Nevada (1.6×), Idaho (1.5×), Florida (1.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2002
The most popular boys’ names the year Caleb peaked:
Caleb elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Caleb | 16,177 | 77th |
| New Zealand boys | Caleb | 5,869 | 13th |
| Scotland boys | Caleb | 2,547 | 51st |
| Northern Ireland boys | Caleb | 1,573 | 21st |
| France boys | Caleb | 1,230 | 381st |
| Ireland boys | Caleb | 1,039 | 91st |
| Belgium boys | Caleb | 217 | 320th |
| Switzerland boys | Caleb | 142 | 550th |
| Poland boys | Caleb | 8 birth registrations | 729th |
| France girls | Caleb | 5 | 4,387th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Caleb: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Caleb | 77 | 0.006% | 530th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Caleb | 64 | 0.015% | 256th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Caleb | 1 | 0.002% | 179th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Caleb is most concentrated in Vaud, where 0.02% of children were given it – 27 of them.
Caleb: rank by region
In 2025, Caleb was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Caleb | 642 | 8 |
| Wallonia | Caleb | 317 | 8 |
In 2024, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Caleb appears in the lists for Province of Flemish Brabant (153rd) and Province of East Flanders (259th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Caleb by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 12 | 447th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Caleb among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Caleb | 40 | 66 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Caleb lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 605 men called Caleb were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Palmas, Las | Caleb | 40 | 0.069 | 1,228 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Caleb | 25 | 0.047 | 1,690 |
| Castellón/Castelló | Caleb | 14 | 0.045 | 1,294 |
| Guadalajara | Caleb | 6 | 0.041 | 1,190 |
| Burgos | Caleb | 7 | 0.039 | 1,244 |
| Barcelona | Caleb | 115 | 0.039 | 1,352 |
Listed in 30 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 22 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Caleb against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.