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Kanaan vs Kane

American parents have registered 19,557 Kanes since 1880, against 1,193 Kanaans. Kane is still ahead, with 695 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kanaan against Kane, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kanaan Kane

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

Kane has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1953 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2004, when Kanaan had 26 and Kane had 276.

Side by side

  Kanaan Kane
Total US births 1,19319,557
Most in one year 871,055
Babies in 2025 49695
Estimated living today 1,20019,000
Median age today 811
Peak year 20182018
Best rank 1,762nd boys319th boys
Rank in 2025 2,641st451st
First recorded 19901953
Girls / boys 0 / 1,19336 / 19,521

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 Kanes alive today are over 11; half the Kanaans are over 8. 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 Kanaan Kane
England and Wales 67,204
France 1025
Switzerland 519

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: Kanaan and Kane.