Humanverse

Mischa vs Misty

American parents have registered 84,891 Mistys since 1880, against 1,891 Mischas. Misty is still ahead, with 35 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Mischa against Misty, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Mischa Misty

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 81 years in which either name was published, Misty for 76 years and Mischa for 5 years. The lead changed hands 8 times.

Side by side

  Mischa Misty
Total US births 1,89184,891
Most in one year 1256,333
Babies in 2025 2635
Estimated living today 1,80081,000
Median age today 1846
Peak year 20081977
Best rank 1,762nd girls40th girls
Rank in 2025 4,987th4,067th
First recorded 19531944
Girls / boys 1,693 / 19884,654 / 237

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 Mistys alive today are over 46; half the Mischas are over 18. That is 28 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 Mischa Misty
England and Wales 667345
France 755
Scotland 403

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: Mischa and Misty.