Cal
The boy's name Cal has been in the national records since 1880, with 7,868 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 542nd. About 6,500 Cals are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 13.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Cal boys named Cal
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 7,868
- Estimated living today
- 6,500
- Median age today
- 13
- Peak year
- 2025
- Best rank
- 542nd
- Rank in 2025
- 542nd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 10 / 7,858
How old the living Cals are
born that year still alive today
Of the 7,868 babies given the name since 1880, about 6,500 are alive — 82 in every hundred. Roughly 3,600 of them are children and 600 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2012 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Notable Cals
- Cal Crutchlow (born 1985)British motorcycle racer
- Cal Ripken Jr. (born 1960)American retired baseball player
- Cal Clutterbuck (born 1987)Canadian ice hockey player
- Cal Tjader (1925–1982)American vibraphonist
- Cal Petersen (born 1994)American ice hockey player
- Cal Newport (born 1982)American computer scientist, academic lecturer and writer
- Cal Hubbard (1900–1977)American football player and coach, baseball umpire
- Cal Niday (1914–1988)racecar driver
People named Cal with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Cal is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Cal is most concentrated in Utah (7.4×), Wisconsin (3.7×), Minnesota (3.0×), Iowa (2.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2025
The most popular boys’ names the year Cal peaked:
Cal elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Cal | 195 | 1,673rd |
| Scotland boys | Cal | 146 | 241st |
| Ireland boys | Cal | 144 | 401st |
| Northern Ireland boys | Cal | 55 | 257th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Related names
Cal against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.