Humanverse

Kagan vs Kage

American parents have registered 1,539 Kages since 1880, against 724 Kagans. Kage is still ahead, with 20 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kagan against Kage, 1880 to 2025 0 25 50 75 100 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kagan Kage

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

Of the 41 years in which either name was published, Kage for 32 years and Kagan for 9 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Kagan Kage
Total US births 7241,539
Most in one year 4185
Babies in 2025 520
Estimated living today 7101,500
Median age today 2114
Peak year 20012009
Best rank 2,618th boys1,774th boys
Rank in 2025 12,008th4,857th
First recorded 19781992
Girls / boys 73 / 6510 / 1,539

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 Kagans alive today are over 21; half the Kages are over 14. That is 7 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 Kagan Kage
England and Wales 2510

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: Kagan and Kage.