Humanverse

Kain vs Kaitlyn

American parents have registered 166,921 Kaitlyns since 1880, against 3,750 Kains. Kaitlyn is still ahead, with 340 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kain against Kaitlyn, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kain Kaitlyn

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 54 years in which either name was published, Kaitlyn for 52 years and Kain for 2 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Kain Kaitlyn
Total US births 3,750166,921
Most in one year 1808,771
Babies in 2025 94340
Estimated living today 3,700165,000
Median age today 1425
Peak year 20162000
Best rank 1,090th boys30th girls
Rank in 2025 1,728th799th
First recorded 19731971
Girls / boys 0 / 3,750166,689 / 232

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 Kaitlyns alive today are over 25; half the Kains are over 14. That is 11 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 Kain Kaitlyn
England and Wales 7775,160
Scotland 39960
Ireland 10488
Northern Ireland 26271
France 60 Kaïn175
Belgium 5 Kaïn28

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: Kain and Kaitlyn.