Humanverse

Kaia vs Kaitlan

American parents have registered 20,967 Kaias since 1880, against 1,119 Kaitlans. Kaia is still ahead, with 1,623 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kaia Kaitlan

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 65 years in which either name was published, Kaia for 54 years and Kaitlan for 11 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Kaia Kaitlan
Total US births 20,9671,119
Most in one year 1,680107
Babies in 2025 1,623under 5
Estimated living today 21,0001,100
Median age today 731
Peak year 20241990
Best rank 180th girls1,456th girls
Rank in 2025 193rdunranked
First recorded 19551982
Girls / boys 20,909 / 581,119 / 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 Kaitlans alive today are over 31; half the Kaias are over 7. That is 24 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 Kaitlan
England and Wales 1,716234

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 Kaitlan.