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Kaela vs Kaetlyn

American parents have registered 6,358 Kaelas since 1880, against 536 Kaetlyns. Kaela is still ahead, with 19 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kaela against Kaetlyn, 1880 to 2025 0 100 200 300 400 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kaela Kaetlyn

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

Kaela has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1967 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2009, when Kaela had 87 and Kaetlyn had 25.

Side by side

  Kaela Kaetlyn
Total US births 6,358536
Most in one year 34557
Babies in 2025 19under 5
Estimated living today 6,300530
Median age today 2825
Peak year 19961997
Best rank 648th girls2,328th girls
Rank in 2025 6,116thunranked
First recorded 19671985
Girls / boys 6,358 / 0536 / 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 Kaelas alive today are over 28; half the Kaetlyns are over 25. That is 3 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

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

Country Kaela Kaetlyn
England and Wales 1933

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: Kaela and Kaetlyn.