One subject, in depth · bridged to FuelFacts
NameCurve
Boys' name · 1,828 recorded births

Cai

#2,108 in the US in 2025

Where Cai stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#2,108boys’ names · US 2025

Cai was the 2,108th most registered boys' name in the United States in 2025, on 69 births.

peak 2022 · 108BELOW THE 5-BIRTH FLOOR — NOT PUBLISHED188019532025

Its moment was 2022, when 108 babies were given it. In 2 of the years between, the name fell under the 5-birth floor and the registrar published nothing — those years are the marks along the base of the chart, not gaps in the name's use.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

#2,108US rank, 2025 (boys)
69US births in 2025
#1,611its best US rank, in 2022
2022peak year — 108 births
1,450US births since 1989
378E&W births, 2019–2025
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Cai's figures are worked out

  1. Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
  2. Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
  3. The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
  4. The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
  5. A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Cai was under the floor in 2 years of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000

Full methodology →

Cai in the United States

18801900192019401960198020002020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 5-BIRTH FLOOR0.03.16.2
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Cai in the United States, 1880–2025

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been steady.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Cai in New Zealand

Cai never reached 10 births in a single year in New Zealand, so it does not appear in the DIA file. That is a reporting floor, not a zero — the name may still have been registered here, just never ten times in one year.

SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Cai in England & Wales

In England and Wales, Cai was registered 378 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2020 with 64 births. It ranked #687 for boys in 2025 on 52 births.

20200.01122
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 3-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Cai in England and Wales, 2019–2025

Seven years is a window, not a history. Unlike the American and New Zealand series this one cannot show you a name's arrival or its long decline — ONS publishes the full list only from 2019. England and Wales only: Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and are not counted here.

SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Decade by decade in the US

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1990#4,99310
2000#4,57316
2010#3,01438
2020#2,11366

<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.

Where in the United States

The states that registered Cai most often since 1989. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.

Questions about Cai

How popular is the name Cai?

Cai ranked #2,108 for boys in the United States in 2025, on 69 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Cai most popular?

Cai peaked in 2022, when 108 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Cai rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all boys' births, Cai has been steady between 2016 and 2025.

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 2022, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.

SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026

See what every site in this family answers

Published by

Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.