Humanverse

Callie vs Calliope

American parents have registered 70,827 Callies since 1880, against 6,098 Calliopes. Callie is still ahead, with 1,754 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Callie against Calliope, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Callie Calliope

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

Callie has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Callie had 1,754 and Calliope had 682.

Side by side

  Callie Calliope
Total US births 70,8276,098
Most in one year 1,763682
Babies in 2025 1,754682
Estimated living today 55,0006,000
Median age today 175
Peak year 20142025
Best rank 186th girls451st girls
Rank in 2025 175th451st
First recorded 18801917
Girls / boys 70,190 / 6376,098 / 0

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 Callies alive today are over 17; half the Calliopes are over 5. That is 12 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 Callie Calliope
England and Wales 4,045293
France 1,800300 Calliopé

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: Callie and Calliope.