Mei vs Meika

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Mei Meika

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 67 years in which either name was published, Mei for 62 years and Meika for 5 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

• 1947–1970 Mei ahead
• 1971–1975 Meika ahead
• 1976–2025 Mei ahead

Side by side

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 Meikas alive today are over 18; half the Meis are over 14. That is 4 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

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

• Mei vs Meir
• Mei vs Meilani
• Mei vs Meira
• Mei vs Meisha
• Mei vs Meila
• Meika vs Meir
• Meika vs Meilani
• Meika vs Meira