Humanverse

Kayah vs Kaylee

American parents have registered 140,601 Kaylees since 1880, against 512 Kayahs. Kaylee is still ahead, with 1,205 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kayah 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 2025, when Kayah had 22 and Kaylee had 1,205.

Side by side

  Kayah Kaylee
Total US births 512140,601
Most in one year 307,225
Babies in 2025 221,205
Estimated living today 510139,000
Median age today 1418
Peak year 20072009
Best rank 4,808th girls26th girls
Rank in 2025 5,554th255th
First recorded 19941943
Girls / boys 512 / 0140,425 / 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.

Which name is older

Half of the Kaylees alive today are over 18; half the Kayahs are over 14. That is 4 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Kayah Kaylee
England and Wales 1141,231

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: Kayah and Kaylee.