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Kaleb vs Kalel

American parents have registered 86,851 Kalebs since 1880, against 4,415 Kalels. Kaleb is still ahead, with 1,143 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kaleb against Kalel, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kaleb Kalel

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

Kaleb has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1970 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2022, when Kaleb had 1,343 and Kalel had 222.

Side by side

  Kaleb Kalel
Total US births 86,8514,415
Most in one year 3,829257
Babies in 2025 1,143180
Estimated living today 85,0004,400
Median age today 1810
Peak year 20072014
Best rank 113th boys859th boys
Rank in 2025 295th1,159th
First recorded 19701996
Girls / boys 202 / 86,64915 / 4,400

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 Kalebs alive today are over 18; half the Kalels are over 10. That is 8 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 Kaleb Kalel
England and Wales 2,724186
France 150180
Ireland 1083

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: Kaleb and Kalel.