Humanverse

Kaleb vs Kalyssa

American parents have registered 86,851 Kalebs since 1880, against 852 Kalyssas. Kaleb is still ahead, with 1,143 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kaleb Kalyssa

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 1987, when Kaleb had 334 and Kalyssa had 5.

Side by side

  Kaleb Kalyssa
Total US births 86,851852
Most in one year 3,82955
Babies in 2025 1,1438
Estimated living today 85,000840
Median age today 1818
Peak year 20072007
Best rank 113th boys3,125th girls
Rank in 2025 295th10,917th
First recorded 19701987
Girls / boys 202 / 86,649852 / 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 Kaleb Kalyssa
France 150350
Belgium 126

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 Kalyssa.