Humanverse

Cailey vs Cain

American parents have registered 7,628 Cains since 1880, against 3,857 Caileys. Cain is still ahead, with 185 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Cailey against Cain, 1880 to 2025 0 100 200 300 400 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Cailey Cain

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 89 years in which either name was published, Cain for 76 years and Cailey for 13 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Cailey Cain
Total US births 3,8577,628
Most in one year 198330
Babies in 2025 16185
Estimated living today 3,8007,400
Median age today 2113
Peak year 19992014
Best rank 1,028th girls727th boys
Rank in 2025 6,838th1,141st
First recorded 19841910
Girls / boys 3,857 / 00 / 7,628

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 Caileys alive today are over 21; half the Cains are over 13. That is 8 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 Cailey Cain
England and Wales 572,117
Scotland 6164

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: Cailey and Cain.