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Kaleigh vs Kali

American parents have registered 33,438 Kalis since 1880, against 16,250 Kaleighs. Kali is still ahead, with 972 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kaleigh against Kali, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kaleigh Kali

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, Kali for 62 years and Kaleigh for 7 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Kaleigh Kali
Total US births 16,25033,438
Most in one year 7291,353
Babies in 2025 56972
Estimated living today 16,00033,000
Median age today 2315
Peak year 20012019
Best rank 399th girls241st girls
Rank in 2025 2,957th323rd
First recorded 19801957
Girls / boys 16,244 / 632,527 / 911

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 Kalis are over 15. That is 8 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 Kali
England and Wales 93644
Scotland 35223
Ireland 16107

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 Kali.