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Kalisa vs Kaliyah

American parents have registered 12,951 Kaliyahs since 1880, against 509 Kalisas. Kaliyah is still ahead, with 791 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kalisa 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 54 years in which either name was published, Kaliyah for 32 years and Kalisa for 22 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Kalisa Kaliyah
Total US births 50912,951
Most in one year 20791
Babies in 2025 15791
Estimated living today 50013,000
Median age today 2211
Peak year 20072025
Best rank 6,552nd girls392nd girls
Rank in 2025 7,133rd392nd
First recorded 19621994
Girls / boys 509 / 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.

Which name is older

Half of the Kalisas alive today are over 22; half the Kaliyahs are over 11. That is 11 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Kalisa Kaliyah
England and Wales 11393

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: Kalisa and Kaliyah.