Mike
Feminine · “who is like God?”
Mike is given to boys far more often — 205,861 boys against 662 girls since 1880. See Mike as a boy name
Mike has been registered as a name in its own right for as long as American records have existed, not merely as a short form of the much longer one behind it. It is also the word for the letter M in the radio alphabet, and that alphabet was assembled by experiment.
How old is the name Mike?
Mike first appears in US birth records in 1916 — 109 years ago. The typical Mike alive today was born around 1959, making them about 66 years old. About 500 people named Mike are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Mike most popular?
Mike peaked in 1946, reaching #2024 nationally. See the whole 1946 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Mikha'el to Mike
The story of Mike
The NATO phonetic alphabet was not made up by somebody with a taste for words. It was tested. Researchers ran candidate words through deliberately degraded radio channels, with listeners from several countries and a range of accents, and kept the ones that survived noise and unfamiliar pronunciation; earlier alphabets had been designed for English speakers alone and fell apart in international use. Several words were changed after field trials — Nectar became November, Extra became X-ray, Delta caused problems in some regions and was kept anyway. The final set has one word per letter, most of them recognizable across the major European languages, and it has been in use essentially unchanged since the nineteen-fifties by aviation, shipping, the military and anybody reading a booking reference down a bad phone line.
Meaning
who is like God?
The formal name is a Hebrew rhetorical question built from three words: who, like, and a form of the divine name. The implied answer is nobody, which is why it belongs to an archangel and why the name is a challenge rather than a description.
How the name formed
- Mikha'el
- Michael
- Mike
Pronouncing Mike
MYKE
One syllable. The silent e marks the vowel as long, which is the ordinary English rule and needs no explaining.
Nicknames for Mike
Moderate
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
- 1916
- Most girls named
- 196927 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2024reached in 1946
- Change vs 1988
- −16.7%5 in 1994, from 6
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.
Mikes among us
people named Mike are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Mike sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- It is understood instantly by everybody and needs no introduction anywhere.
- One syllable is quick, clear and hard to mishear across a room.
- The formal name stands behind it for occasions that want one.
- It reads as a short form even when it is the registered name.
- It is strongly associated with particular mid-century decades.
- It is also the ordinary word for a microphone, which readers will notice.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Mike
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Mikes are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 500 people named Mike are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Mike in 2025?
- Mike is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Mike with classmates?
- Mike will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More M names
The most-given names starting with M, all years combined.
Mary#125 · Margaret#112 · Michelle#465 · Melissa#419 · Maria#87 · Martha#712 · Marie#617 · Mildred#1962
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Mike? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Mike and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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