Humanverse

Kaya vs Kaylee

American parents have registered 140,601 Kaylees since 1880, against 10,976 Kayas. Kaylee is still ahead, with 1,205 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kaya against Kaylee, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kaya Kaylee

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

Kaylee has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1943 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1974, when Kaya had 9 and Kaylee had 9.

Side by side

  Kaya Kaylee
Total US births 10,976140,601
Most in one year 5617,225
Babies in 2025 2211,205
Estimated living today 11,000139,000
Median age today 1718
Peak year 20042009
Best rank 541st girls26th girls
Rank in 2025 1,132nd255th
First recorded 19681943
Girls / boys 10,314 / 662140,425 / 176

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.

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 Kaya Kaylee
England and Wales 2,7711,231
France 425745
Belgium 124366
Ireland 184259
Scotland 143193
Northern Ireland 1448

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: Kaya and Kaylee.