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Micheal vs Michel

American parents have registered 156,555 Micheals since 1880, against 14,094 Michels. Micheal is still ahead, with 130 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Micheal Michel

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

Micheal 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 1892, when Micheal had 11 and Michel had 7.

Side by side

  Micheal Michel
Total US births 156,55514,094
Most in one year 4,861325
Babies in 2025 13031
Estimated living today 124,00011,000
Median age today 5551
Peak year 19571957
Best rank 85th boys457th boys
Rank in 2025 1,401st4,539th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 1,836 / 154,7193,555 / 10,539

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 Micheals alive today are over 55; half the Michels are over 51. That is 4 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 Micheal Michel
France 35820,690
Ireland 2,35914
England and Wales 42783
Poland 2 Mícheál67

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: Micheal and Michel.