Makayla
Feminine · “Who is like God?”
Makayla is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 108,030 girls against 153 boys since 1880.
Behind the modern spelling sits Michael — one of the oldest names still in continuous use anywhere in the West, and a question rather than a statement. Makayla is the American way of writing its feminine form the way it actually sounds: three unhurried syllables with the weight in the middle, closing on the same soft -la that Camila and Priscilla share. It has come with a ready-made short form, Kayla, from the beginning.
How old is the name Makayla?
Makayla first appears in US birth records in 1971 — 54 years ago. The typical Makayla alive today was born around 2005, making them about 20 years old. About 107,000 people named Makayla are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Makayla most popular?
Makayla peaked in 2008, reaching #37 nationally. Today it ranks #566, 529 places below that high. See the whole 2008 chart.
Where it comes from
From Mikha'el to Makayla
The story of Makayla
Mikha'el appears in the Hebrew Bible as the name of an archangel, and passed through Greek and Latin into nearly every European language as Michael. A feminine counterpart, Michaela, developed on the Latin pattern and became standard in German, Czech and Italian-speaking regions. English speakers inherited that form but not its spelling logic, since the -ch- confuses more than it clarifies in English, and rewrote it by ear: Makayla, Mikayla, Mikaela, McKayla. Makayla is the version that took hold most widely in American records during the later twentieth century, a young spelling carrying a very old name.
Meaning
"Who is like God?" — a rhetorical question, from Hebrew
The meaning belongs to the root name, Hebrew Mikha'el, of which Michaela is the feminine form and Makayla a phonetic English spelling. The question was asked rhetorically: no one is.
How the name formed
- Mikha'el
- Michael
- Michaela
- Mikayla
- Makayla
Related forms: Michaela · Micaela · Mihaela · Mikaela · Michelle · Michalina
Pronouncing Makayla
muh-KAY-luh
Stress falls on the middle syllable. Some families say may-KAY-luh, giving the first syllable a fuller vowel; both are heard and neither needs correcting.
Nicknames for Makayla
High
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1971
- Most girls named
- 20085,957 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #37reached in 2008
- Change vs 2024
- −5.7%530 in 2025, from 562
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Makayla in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Michaela in German, Czech — same name
- Micaela in Spanish, Italian — same name
- Mihaela in Romanian — same name
- Mikaela in Swedish, Finnish — spelling variant
- Michelle in French — related form
- Michalina in Polish — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, Florida.
Makaylas among us
people named Makayla are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 3,033 born in 2025 was named Makayla
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Jacqueline test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Makayla's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Jacqueline climbed just as high around 1961, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Jacqueline's path sketches the road Makayla is walking now.
Makayla is coming down from a big peak (#37 in 2008). This is the stretch of the cycle where a name starts to sound like the decade it ruled.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Makayla is headed
Makayla is easing off slowly — about 25% fewer babies a year by 2030 if the trend continues.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Makayla beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Makayla in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Fully transparent to read aloud — the spelling was built to match the sound, so almost no American reader hesitates over it.
- Comes with Kayla, a short form that also stands alone as a given name, giving a formal and an informal option without effort.
- Traces back to Michael, a name documented in continuous use for well over two thousand years.
- Has close relatives in German, Spanish, Romanian, Swedish and French, so it travels with a recognizable counterpart in most of Europe.
- The spelling field is crowded: Mikayla, Michaela, Micaela, Mikaela and McKayla all sound near-identical. Expect to spell it out on the phone for life, and expect forms to come back wrong now and then.
- The name is stepping back from a high point rather than climbing, so among adults it reads as belonging to a particular recent stretch of years — while a child given it now will likely be the only one in her class.
- The -ayla ending sits close to a whole family of names built the same way, which can mean occasional mix-ups with a Kayla, Makenna or Michaela in the same room.
Nobody names a baby alone.
Put Makayla to the vote.
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What they receive
Someone added a name to your list
Makayla
Feminine · #566 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Makaylas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 107,000 people named Makayla are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Makayla in 2025?
- Makayla ranks #566 among US girl names in 2025, with 530 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Makayla?
- About 1 in every 3,033 US girls born in 2025 was named Makayla — 530 in all.
- Will my child share the name Makayla with classmates?
- Makayla will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Makayla
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Ivanna#566 · Amalia#566 · Nadia#565 · Izabella#564 · Allie#569 · Hadassah#569 · Della#563 · Armani#562
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Makayla? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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