Humanverse

Kalaya vs Kaliyah

American parents have registered 12,951 Kaliyahs since 1880, against 1,559 Kalayas. Kaliyah is still ahead, with 791 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kalaya against Kaliyah, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kalaya Kaliyah

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 37 years in which either name was published, Kaliyah for 32 years and Kalaya for 5 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Kalaya Kaliyah
Total US births 1,55912,951
Most in one year 109791
Babies in 2025 109791
Estimated living today 1,50013,000
Median age today 1011
Peak year 20252025
Best rank 1,833rd girls392nd girls
Rank in 2025 1,833rd392nd
First recorded 19871994
Girls / boys 1,559 / 012,946 / 5

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 Kalaya Kaliyah
England and Wales 46393

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: Kalaya and Kaliyah.