Humanverse

Kane vs Kanye

American parents have registered 19,557 Kanes since 1880, against 1,428 Kanyes. Kane is still ahead, with 695 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kane Kanye

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 73 years in which either name was published, Kane for 72 years and Kanye for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Kane Kanye
Total US births 19,5571,428
Most in one year 1,055528
Babies in 2025 6955
Estimated living today 19,0001,400
Median age today 1120
Peak year 20182004
Best rank 319th boys486th boys
Rank in 2025 451st12,008th
First recorded 19532002
Girls / boys 36 / 19,52124 / 1,404

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 Kanyes alive today are over 20; half the Kanes are over 11. That is 9 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 Kane Kanye
England and Wales 7,204145
France 2545

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: Kane and Kanye.