Humanverse

Kaley vs Kali

American parents have registered 33,438 Kalis since 1880, against 13,707 Kaleys. Kali is still ahead, with 972 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kaley 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 66 years and Kaley for 3 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Kaley Kali
Total US births 13,70733,438
Most in one year 5781,353
Babies in 2025 38972
Estimated living today 13,00033,000
Median age today 2515
Peak year 20032019
Best rank 495th girls241st girls
Rank in 2025 3,832nd323rd
First recorded 19671957
Girls / boys 13,682 / 2532,527 / 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 Kaleys alive today are over 25; half the Kalis are over 15. That is 10 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 Kaley Kali
France 5990
England and Wales 102644
Scotland 23223
Ireland 10107
Northern Ireland 325
Belgium 510

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: Kaley and Kali.