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Kali vs Kalina

American parents have registered 33,438 Kalis since 1880, against 4,288 Kalinas. Kali is still ahead, with 972 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kali Kalina

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 1962, when Kali had 7 and Kalina had 6.

Side by side

  Kali Kalina
Total US births 33,4384,288
Most in one year 1,353171
Babies in 2025 972135
Estimated living today 33,0004,200
Median age today 1515
Peak year 20192019
Best rank 241st girls1,332nd girls
Rank in 2025 323rd1,561st
First recorded 19571962
Girls / boys 32,527 / 9114,288 / 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.

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 Kalina
France 990250
England and Wales 644352
Scotland 22316
Switzerland 30170
Ireland 10756
Belgium 1012

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 Kalina.