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Kalen vs Kaliyah

American parents have registered 12,951 Kaliyahs since 1880, against 6,096 Kalens. Kaliyah is still ahead, with 791 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kalen Kaliyah

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 68 years in which either name was published, Kalen for 43 years and Kaliyah for 25 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Kalen Kaliyah
Total US births 6,09612,951
Most in one year 226791
Babies in 2025 80791
Estimated living today 5,90013,000
Median age today 2511
Peak year 19982025
Best rank 858th boys392nd girls
Rank in 2025 2,077th392nd
First recorded 19521994
Girls / boys 1,467 / 4,62912,946 / 5

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 Kalens alive today are over 25; half the Kaliyahs are over 11. That is 14 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 Kalen Kaliyah
England and Wales 315393
France 16520
Scotland 98
Ireland 94

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: Kalen and Kaliyah.