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Cailin vs Cairo

American parents have registered 9,999 Cairos since 1880, against 3,743 Cailins. Cairo is still ahead, with 1,000 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Cailin 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 53 years in which either name was published, Cailin for 38 years and Cairo for 15 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Cailin Cairo
Total US births 3,7439,999
Most in one year 1691,157
Babies in 2025 71,000
Estimated living today 3,7009,900
Median age today 234
Peak year 20032022
Best rank 1,272nd girls306th boys
Rank in 2025 11,932nd341st
First recorded 19681979
Girls / boys 3,713 / 30584 / 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 Cailins alive today are over 23; half the Cairos are over 4. That is 19 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 Cailin Cairo
England and Wales 1501,604
Ireland 987
Scotland 6837

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: Cailin and Cairo.