Mitchell

124,130 people in America carry this name — ranked #458 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it MIH chuhl

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

M IH1 CH AH0 L — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 124,130 2020 Census
  • Rank #458 Common
  • Per 100,000 41.1 about 1 in 2,670 people

The meaning and origin of Mitchell

Reads literally as “a corruption of Michael, or from the Saxon Muchel, big”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

How often Mitchell has been given

163,778 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1994, with 5,391 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90s 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1990s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

Middle names for Mitchell

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Mitchell Michael — same opening
  • Mitchell Matthew — same opening
  • Mitchell Mark — same opening

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

A name and a surname

Mitchell is carried in front of the comma and behind it — thousands of Americans have it as a surname too.

Is Mitchell used for boys or for girls?

99.3% men
874 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 83.4%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 6.3%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 4.4%
  • Two or more races — 3.3%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 1.7%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.9%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Same syllables and stress as Mitchell

Nothing else in the file ends on the same sound — a rare thing, and useful if you want a first name nobody will echo.

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

The likeliest full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

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Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers