Humanverse

Kalila vs Kaliyah

American parents have registered 12,951 Kaliyahs since 1880, against 1,168 Kalilas. Kaliyah is still ahead, with 791 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kalila 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 49 years in which either name was published, Kaliyah for 32 years and Kalila for 17 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Kalila Kaliyah
Total US births 1,16812,951
Most in one year 67791
Babies in 2025 52791
Estimated living today 1,20013,000
Median age today 1111
Peak year 20192025
Best rank 2,593rd girls392nd girls
Rank in 2025 3,100th392nd
First recorded 19771994
Girls / boys 1,168 / 012,946 / 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.

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 Kalila Kaliyah
England and Wales 126393
France 3520

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: Kalila and Kaliyah.