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Kaliyah vs Kalli

American parents have registered 12,951 Kaliyahs since 1880, against 5,317 Kallis. Kaliyah is still ahead, with 791 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kaliyah Kalli

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 67 years in which either name was published, Kalli for 42 years and Kaliyah for 25 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Kaliyah Kalli
Total US births 12,9515,317
Most in one year 791259
Babies in 2025 79156
Estimated living today 13,0005,200
Median age today 1122
Peak year 20252007
Best rank 392nd girls1,019th girls
Rank in 2025 392nd2,957th
First recorded 19941952
Girls / boys 12,946 / 55,317 / 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 Kallis 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.

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 Kaliyah Kalli
England and Wales 393107
Scotland 812

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: Kaliyah and Kalli.