Mikayla
Feminine · “Who is like God?”
Mikayla is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 56,713 girls against 11 boys since 1880.
Behind the k and the y sits one of the oldest names in the Western record: Michael, the Hebrew question that means "who is like God?" Mikayla is the English-spelled daughter of that name, arriving through Michaela and settling into a shape an American reader can say correctly at first sight. Three syllables, with the weight in the middle, ending on the same soft vowel that closes Ayla, Layla and Ella.
How old is the name Mikayla?
Mikayla first appears in US birth records in 1970 — 55 years ago. The typical Mikayla alive today was born around 2002, making them about 23 years old. About 56,000 people named Mikayla are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Mikayla most popular?
Mikayla peaked in 1998, reaching #82 nationally. Today it ranks #746, 664 places below that high. See the whole 1998 chart.
Mikayla appears on this list:
Where it comes from
From Mikha'el to Mikayla
The story of Mikayla
Michael comes from the Hebrew Mikha'el, borne in scripture by the archangel who appears in the Book of Daniel and again in Revelation, and the name spread with Christianity across Greek, Latin and every language of Europe. Feminine forms followed — Michaela in German and Czech, Micaela in Spanish and Italian, Mihaela in Romanian — each pronounced according to local rules. Mikayla is the American spelling of that feminine form, written the way English speakers actually say it, with k for the hard consonant and -ayla for the long middle syllable. It belongs to a broad family of respellings that took hold in the United States in the closing decades of the twentieth century.
Meaning
Who is like God? — a feminine form of Michael
The Hebrew name Mikha'el is built as a rhetorical question, not a statement; Michaela and its respellings, Mikayla among them, are the feminine forms.
How the name formed
- Mikha'el
- Michael
- Michaela
- Mikaela
- Mikayla
Related forms: Michaela · Micaela · Mihaela · Mikaela · Michaela · Michèle
Pronouncing Mikayla
mih-KAY-luh
Stress on the middle syllable. The spelling makes that pronunciation almost automatic for English speakers, which is much of the reason this form exists.
Nicknames for Mikayla
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
- 1970
- Most girls named
- 19983,858 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #82reached in 1998
- Change vs 2024
- +0.3%364 in 2025, from 363
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.
Mikayla in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Michaela in Czech / German — same name
- Micaela in Spanish / Italian — same name
- Mihaela in Romanian — same name
- Mikaela in Swedish / Finnish — spelling variant
- Michaela in Hebrew — transliteration
- Michèle in French — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, New York, Texas.
Mikaylas among us
people named Mikayla are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 4,416 born in 2025 was named Mikayla
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 Jeanette test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Mikayla's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Jeanette climbed just as high around 1939, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Jeanette's path sketches the road Mikayla is walking now.
Mikayla is coming down from a big peak (#82 in 1998). 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 Mikayla is headed
Mikayla is easing off slowly — about 17% 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.
Mikayla beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Mikayla in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Reads correctly at first sight for English speakers — the spelling was built around the pronunciation rather than inherited from Latin or Greek.
- Rests on Michael, a name with an unbroken documented record of well over two thousand years and forms in nearly every European language.
- Comes with short forms already in circulation: Kayla, Mika, Mickey — including some that work as full names on their own.
- Familiar to nearly everyone without being crowded in classrooms now; the sound is known even where this exact spelling is not.
- The spelling is one of several in active use — Michaela, Mikaela, Makayla, Micaela and McKayla all sound alike or nearly so. Expect to spell it out often, and expect forms to come back wrong.
- It is closely tied to one recent stretch of American naming, so it reads as contemporary rather than inherited. Many adults now carrying it are in their twenties, which shapes how the name lands on a baby.
- Kayla sits inside it and can quietly take over as the everyday name. Worth deciding in advance whether that suits you.
- The connection to Michael is real but not obvious in this spelling — if honoring a Michael is the point, some relatives may need it explained once.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
Someone added a name to your list
Mikayla
Feminine · #746 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Mikaylas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 56,000 people named Mikayla are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Mikayla in 2025?
- Mikayla ranks #746 among US girl names in 2025, with 364 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Mikayla?
- About 1 in every 4,416 US girls born in 2025 was named Mikayla — 364 in all.
- Will my child share the name Mikayla with classmates?
- Mikayla will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Mikayla
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Dani#746 · Araceli#746 · Maisy#745 · Karina#749 · Valery#743 · Davina#749 · Kiana#743 · Kensley#741
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Mikayla? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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