Humanverse

Kali vs Kaliah

American parents have registered 33,438 Kalis since 1880, against 2,676 Kaliahs. Kali is still ahead, with 972 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kali Kaliah

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

Kali has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1957 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2010, when Kali had 560 and Kaliah had 107.

Side by side

  Kali Kaliah
Total US births 33,4382,676
Most in one year 1,353129
Babies in 2025 972118
Estimated living today 33,0002,700
Median age today 1512
Peak year 20192021
Best rank 241st girls1,622nd girls
Rank in 2025 323rd1,721st
First recorded 19571978
Girls / boys 32,527 / 9112,676 / 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 Kalis alive today are over 15; half the Kaliahs are over 12. That is 3 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 Kali Kaliah
France 9905
England and Wales 64473

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: Kali and Kaliah.