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Mitchel vs Mitchell

American parents have registered 165,191 Mitchells since 1880, against 13,309 Mitchels. Mitchell is still ahead, with 245 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Mitchel against Mitchell, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Mitchel Mitchell

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

Mitchell 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 1889, when Mitchel had 9 and Mitchell had 21.

Side by side

  Mitchel Mitchell
Total US births 13,309165,191
Most in one year 4075,391
Babies in 2025 10245
Estimated living today 10,000137,000
Median age today 3737
Peak year 19941994
Best rank 498th boys71st boys
Rank in 2025 7,679th952nd
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 22 / 13,2871,128 / 164,063

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.

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 Mitchel Mitchell
England and Wales 6078,232
Scotland 401,004
Northern Ireland 659
Belgium 2439
Ireland 459
France 1525

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: Mitchel and Mitchell.