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Kaleigh vs Kalel

American parents have registered 16,250 Kaleighs since 1880, against 4,415 Kalels. But in 2025 it was Kalel that was commoner, 180 babies to 56.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kaleigh 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

Of the 46 years in which either name was published, Kaleigh for 36 years and Kalel for 10 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Kaleigh Kalel
Total US births 16,2504,415
Most in one year 729257
Babies in 2025 56180
Estimated living today 16,0004,400
Median age today 2310
Peak year 20012014
Best rank 399th girls859th boys
Rank in 2025 2,957th1,159th
First recorded 19801996
Girls / boys 16,244 / 615 / 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 Kaleighs alive today are over 23; half the Kalels are over 10. That is 13 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 Kaleigh Kalel
England and Wales 93186
Ireland 163

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: Kaleigh and Kalel.