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Kaleel vs Kaleigh

American parents have registered 16,250 Kaleighs since 1880, against 555 Kaleels. Kaleigh is still ahead, with 56 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kaleel Kaleigh

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

Kaleigh has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1980 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Kaleel had 13 and Kaleigh had 56.

Side by side

  Kaleel Kaleigh
Total US births 55516,250
Most in one year 30729
Babies in 2025 1356
Estimated living today 55016,000
Median age today 2023
Peak year 19972001
Best rank 2,613th boys399th girls
Rank in 2025 6,446th2,957th
First recorded 19921980
Girls / boys 0 / 55516,244 / 6

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 Kaleighs alive today are over 23; half the Kaleels are over 20. That is 3 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Kaleel Kaleigh
England and Wales 1593

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: Kaleel and Kaleigh.