Humanverse

Cael vs Caelyn

American parents have registered 3,745 Caels since 1880, against 2,426 Caelyns. Cael is still ahead, with 79 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Cael against Caelyn, 1880 to 2025 0 80 160 240 320 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Cael Caelyn

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 38 years in which either name was published, Cael for 25 years and Caelyn for 13 years. The lead changed hands 5 times.

Side by side

  Cael Caelyn
Total US births 3,7452,426
Most in one year 272198
Babies in 2025 7924
Estimated living today 3,7002,400
Median age today 1615
Peak year 20112012
Best rank 805th boys1,251st girls
Rank in 2025 1,942nd5,238th
First recorded 19891987
Girls / boys 13 / 3,7322,421 / 5

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.

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 Cael Caelyn
England and Wales 15555
Ireland 567
Scotland 269

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: Cael and Caelyn.