Humanverse

Kaitlyn vs Kaytlyn

American parents have registered 166,921 Kaitlyns since 1880, against 2,722 Kaytlyns. Kaitlyn is still ahead, with 340 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kaitlyn Kaytlyn

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

Kaitlyn has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1971 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2019, when Kaitlyn had 701 and Kaytlyn had 23.

Side by side

  Kaitlyn Kaytlyn
Total US births 166,9212,722
Most in one year 8,771158
Babies in 2025 3406
Estimated living today 165,0002,700
Median age today 2526
Peak year 20001998
Best rank 30th girls1,180th girls
Rank in 2025 799th13,208th
First recorded 19711985
Girls / boys 166,689 / 2322,722 / 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.

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 Kaitlyn Kaytlyn
England and Wales 5,16071
Scotland 9608
Ireland 4888

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: Kaitlyn and Kaytlyn.