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Kalel vs Kaley

American parents have registered 13,707 Kaleys since 1880, against 4,415 Kalels. But in 2025 it was Kalel that was commoner, 180 babies to 38.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kalel against Kaley, 1880 to 2025 0 150 300 450 600 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kalel Kaley

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 58 years in which either name was published, Kaley for 46 years and Kalel for 12 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Kalel Kaley
Total US births 4,41513,707
Most in one year 257578
Babies in 2025 18038
Estimated living today 4,40013,000
Median age today 1025
Peak year 20142003
Best rank 859th boys495th girls
Rank in 2025 1,159th3,832nd
First recorded 19961967
Girls / boys 15 / 4,40013,682 / 25

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 Kaleys alive today are over 25; half the Kalels are over 10. That is 15 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 Kalel Kaley
England and Wales 186102
France 1805
Ireland 310

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: Kalel and Kaley.