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Kaelyn vs Kaetlyn

American parents have registered 15,648 Kaelyns since 1880, against 536 Kaetlyns. Kaelyn is still ahead, with 131 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kaelyn against Kaetlyn, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kaelyn 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

Kaelyn has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1959 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1997, when Kaelyn had 322 and Kaetlyn had 57.

Side by side

  Kaelyn Kaetlyn
Total US births 15,648536
Most in one year 1,00657
Babies in 2025 131under 5
Estimated living today 15,000530
Median age today 1725
Peak year 20091997
Best rank 331st girls2,328th girls
Rank in 2025 1,592ndunranked
First recorded 19591985
Girls / boys 15,566 / 82536 / 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 Kaetlyns alive today are over 25; half the Kaelyns are over 17. That is 8 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 Kaelyn Kaetlyn
England and Wales 1463

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: Kaelyn and Kaetlyn.