Humanverse

Mikayla vs Mikel

American parents have registered 56,724 Mikaylas since 1880, against 12,554 Mikels. Mikayla is still ahead, with 364 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Mikayla against Mikel, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Mikayla Mikel

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 105 years in which either name was published, Mikel for 68 years and Mikayla for 37 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Mikayla Mikel
Total US births 56,72412,554
Most in one year 3,858224
Babies in 2025 36481
Estimated living today 56,00011,000
Median age today 2234
Peak year 19982004
Best rank 82nd girls871st boys
Rank in 2025 746th1,919th
First recorded 19701882
Girls / boys 56,713 / 11995 / 11,559

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 Mikels alive today are over 34; half the Mikaylas are over 22. 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 Mikayla Mikel
England and Wales 992352
France 15685
Scotland 1203
Poland 44

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: Mikayla and Mikel.