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Kaleigh vs Kaleyah

American parents have registered 16,250 Kaleighs since 1880, against 579 Kaleyahs. Kaleigh is still ahead, with 56 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kaleigh Kaleyah

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 2023, when Kaleigh had 78 and Kaleyah had 27.

Side by side

  Kaleigh Kaleyah
Total US births 16,250579
Most in one year 72932
Babies in 2025 5618
Estimated living today 16,000580
Median age today 2312
Peak year 20012011
Best rank 399th girls4,466th girls
Rank in 2025 2,957th6,325th
First recorded 19801997
Girls / boys 16,244 / 6579 / 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.

Which name is older

Half of the Kaleighs alive today are over 23; half the Kaleyahs are over 12. That is 11 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 Kaleigh Kaleyah
England and Wales 935

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 Kaleyah.