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Micah vs Michaela

American parents have registered 133,606 Micahs since 1880, against 53,702 Michaelas. Micah is still ahead, with 4,108 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Micah against Michaela, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Micah Michaela

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 94 years in which either name was published, Micah for 60 years and Michaela for 34 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Micah Michaela
Total US births 133,60653,702
Most in one year 4,2463,405
Babies in 2025 4,108323
Estimated living today 131,00052,000
Median age today 1627
Peak year 20221997
Best rank 89th boys100th girls
Rank in 2025 90th841st
First recorded 19461921
Girls / boys 14,035 / 119,57153,633 / 69

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 Michaelas alive today are over 27; half the Micahs are over 16. That is 11 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 Micah Michaela
England and Wales 4,1463,763
Ireland 701,805
Scotland 1811,019
New Zealand 341687
France 195660
Northern Ireland 323270
Switzerland 72319
Poland 7244
Belgium 7524

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: Micah and Michaela.