Humanverse

Kay vs Kaysie

American parents have registered 102,545 Kays since 1880, against 1,267 Kaysies. Kay is still ahead, with 47 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kay against Kaysie, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kay Kaysie

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

Kay has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1882 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1999, when Kay had 66 and Kaysie had 41.

Side by side

  Kay Kaysie
Total US births 102,5451,267
Most in one year 3,71856
Babies in 2025 4711
Estimated living today 62,0001,200
Median age today 7327
Peak year 19421990
Best rank 75th girls2,258th girls
Rank in 2025 3,903rd8,860th
First recorded 18821972
Girls / boys 98,621 / 3,9241,267 / 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 Kays alive today are over 73; half the Kaysies are over 27. That is 46 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 Kay Kaysie
England and Wales 472141
Scotland 5664
France 7015

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: Kay and Kaysie.