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Kaia vs Kailen

American parents have registered 20,967 Kaias since 1880, against 1,673 Kailens. Kaia is still ahead, with 1,623 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kaia against Kailen, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kaia Kailen

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

Kaia 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 1987, when Kaia had 18 and Kailen had 18.

Side by side

  Kaia Kailen
Total US births 20,9671,673
Most in one year 1,68071
Babies in 2025 1,62323
Estimated living today 21,0001,700
Median age today 717
Peak year 20242023
Best rank 180th girls2,895th boys
Rank in 2025 193rd4,396th
First recorded 19551983
Girls / boys 20,909 / 58728 / 945

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 Kailens alive today are over 17; half the Kaias are over 7. That is 10 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 Kaia Kailen
England and Wales 1,716343
Ireland 2673
Scotland 13311

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: Kaia and Kailen.