Meaning not yet researched.
Cael: US boys given the name each year, 1880 to 2025, from Social Security card applications. 79 in 2025. Its best rank was #778 in 2002.
US births per year · SSA card applications
Peaked at #778 in 2002; #1,945 in 2025. Every baby recorded as Cael in 2025 was a boy.
Baby name · US data 1880–2025
#1,945 for US boys in 2025. Its best year was 2002, at #778.
Hover, tap or use the arrow keys for any year. Years with fewer than five babies of a sex are not published by SSA and show as zero.
Cael: US boys given the name each year from 1880 to 2025. 79 boys in 2025. Peak: #778 in 2002 · most boys in one year: 272 (2011).
In 2025, 79 US boys were named Cael, making it the 1,945th most common boys’ name of the year, up 404 places from #2,349 in 2024. That is 19 more than the 60 boys named Cael in 2024. Its best rank for boys was #778, reached in 2002. The most boys given the name in a single year was 272, in 2011. For comparison, it was #1,248 in 2015 and unranked in 1950.
Social Security card records list Cael in 33 years of the 146 from 1880 to 2025, starting in 1989 with 8 babies. In all, 3,745 US babies have been given the name, 0.3% of them girls and 99.6% boys. Its busiest decade was the 2000s, with 1,836 babies named Cael.
Over the 10 years from 2016 to 2025, 605 US boys were named Cael; the busiest of those years was 2016, with 92. In 2025 that was about 1 in 21,621 of the boys in SSA’s list for the year.
Among the states, Cael ranked highest in Iowa in 2025, at #589 for boys there. It was not in the top 100 of any state. Related spellings in the SSA files include Cale (8,291 babies since 1880), Cal (7,868 babies since 1880), Kael (4,071 babies since 1880) and Kal (1,256 babies since 1880).
Meaning not yet researched.
We publish a meaning only with a cited source and a confidence label, and never generate one. Meanings are being researched for the most common names first.
Numbers are all-time US births. Links come from Wikidata’s “said to be the same as” (P460, CC0) and our spelling rule: at most two letters different, with the same sound pattern.
No nicknames listed for Cael in the open dataset we use.
Source: carltonnorthern/nicknames (Apache-2.0).
US boys. Rank within each state. SSA leaves out states where fewer than five boys got the name, so 47 are not listed.
| State | Births 2025 | Rank 2025 | Rank 2015 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Iowa | 5 | #589 | #318 |
| Maryland | 6 | #722 | — |
| Texas | 10 | #1,669 | #1,553 |
| California | 5 | #2,530 | #2,619 |
Births and national rank for each year SSA lists the name, newest first.
| Year | Girls | Girls rank | Boys | Boys rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | — | — | 79 | #1,945 |
| 2024 | — | — | 60 | #2,349 |
| 2023 | — | — | 42 | #2,959 |
| 2022 | — | — | 38 | #3,163 |
| 2021 | — | — | 44 | #2,828 |
| 2020 | — | — | 51 | #2,515 |
| 2019 | — | — | 57 | #2,370 |
| 2018 | — | — | 73 | #1,995 |
| 2017 | — | — | 69 | #2,036 |
| 2016 | — | — | 92 | #1,695 |
| 2015 | — | — | 145 | #1,248 |
| 2014 | — | — | 173 | #1,102 |
| 2013 | — | — | 182 | #1,052 |
| 2012 | — | — | 212 | #950 |
| 2011 | — | — | 272 | #805 |
| 2010 | 5 | #17,521 | 252 | #840 |
| 2009 | — | — | 270 | #817 |
| 2008 | — | — | 263 | #832 |
| 2007 | 8 | #12,887 | 214 | #925 |
| 2006 | — | — | 206 | #919 |
| 2005 | — | — | 215 | #854 |
| 2004 | — | — | 175 | #959 |
| 2003 | — | — | 176 | #933 |
| 2002 | — | — | 222 | #778 |
| 2001 | — | — | 55 | #1,961 |
| 2000 | — | — | 32 | #2,812 |
| 1999 | — | — | 22 | #3,496 |
| 1998 | — | — | 11 | #5,519 |
| 1997 | — | — | 5 | #9,462 |
| 1996 | — | — | 6 | #8,087 |
| 1993 | — | — | 6 | #7,753 |
| 1990 | — | — | 5 | #8,281 |
| 1989 | — | — | 8 | #5,703 |
About the data: counts are Social Security card applications for US births, for names given to at least five babies of a sex in a year (SSA, names.zip, public domain). Ranks follow SSA’s own order: most births first, ties alphabetical. Files retrieved 2026-10-05 (checksum on our sources page).