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Kal vs Kallie

American parents have registered 12,683 Kallies since 1880, against 1,256 Kals. Kallie is still ahead, with 279 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kal against Kallie, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kal Kallie

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 78 years in which either name was published, Kallie for 65 years and Kal for 13 years. The lead changed hands 12 times.

10 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Kal Kallie
Total US births 1,25612,683
Most in one year 72444
Babies in 2025 60279
Estimated living today 1,20013,000
Median age today 1017
Peak year 20212014
Best rank 2,040th boys642nd girls
Rank in 2025 2,304th933rd
First recorded 19471923
Girls / boys 0 / 1,25612,683 / 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 Kallies alive today are over 17; half the Kals are over 10. 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 Kal Kallie
England and Wales 165531
Scotland 57132
Ireland 1958
France 560
Northern Ireland 39

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: Kal and Kallie.