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Caitlin vs Kaytlyn

American parents have registered 112,426 Caitlins since 1880, against 2,722 Kaytlyns. Caitlin is still ahead, with 78 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Caitlin against Kaytlyn, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Caitlin Kaytlyn

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Caitlin has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1955 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2022, when Caitlin had 86 and Kaytlyn had 14.

Side by side

  Caitlin Kaytlyn
Total US births 112,4262,722
Most in one year 7,274158
Babies in 2025 786
Estimated living today 110,0002,700
Median age today 3226
Peak year 19881998
Best rank 44th girls1,180th girls
Rank in 2025 2,326th13,208th
First recorded 19551985
Girls / boys 112,143 / 2832,722 / 0

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Caitlins alive today are over 32; half the Kaytlyns are over 26. That is 6 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Caitlin Kaytlyn
England and Wales 28,96471
Scotland 6,9868
Ireland 2,8848

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Caitlin and Kaytlyn.