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Kaleb vs Kalen

American parents have registered 86,851 Kalebs since 1880, against 6,096 Kalens. Kaleb is still ahead, with 1,143 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kaleb Kalen

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 69 years in which either name was published, Kaleb for 54 years and Kalen for 15 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Kaleb Kalen
Total US births 86,8516,096
Most in one year 3,829226
Babies in 2025 1,14380
Estimated living today 85,0005,900
Median age today 1825
Peak year 20071998
Best rank 113th boys858th boys
Rank in 2025 295th2,077th
First recorded 19701952
Girls / boys 202 / 86,6491,467 / 4,629

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 Kalens alive today are over 25; half the Kalebs are over 18. 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 Kaleb Kalen
England and Wales 2,724315
Scotland 4269
France 150165
Ireland 1089

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 Kalen.