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Cailey vs Cairo

American parents have registered 9,999 Cairos since 1880, against 3,857 Caileys. Cairo is still ahead, with 1,000 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Cailey against Cairo, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Cailey Cairo

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 44 years in which either name was published, Cailey for 28 years and Cairo for 16 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Cailey Cairo
Total US births 3,8579,999
Most in one year 1981,157
Babies in 2025 161,000
Estimated living today 3,8009,900
Median age today 214
Peak year 19992022
Best rank 1,028th girls306th boys
Rank in 2025 6,838th341st
First recorded 19841979
Girls / boys 3,857 / 0584 / 9,415

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 Cairos are over 4. That is 17 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 Cairo
England and Wales 571,604
Scotland 637

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 Cairo.