Humanverse

Kayde vs Kayleigh

American parents have registered 34,568 Kayleighs since 1880, against 975 Kaydes. Kayleigh is still ahead, with 340 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kayde against Kayleigh, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kayde Kayleigh

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

Kayleigh has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1984 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Kayde had 45 and Kayleigh had 340.

Side by side

  Kayde Kayleigh
Total US births 97534,568
Most in one year 511,450
Babies in 2025 45340
Estimated living today 97034,000
Median age today 1118
Peak year 20232009
Best rank 2,614th boys227th girls
Rank in 2025 2,798th799th
First recorded 19851984
Girls / boys 337 / 63834,561 / 7

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 Kayleighs alive today are over 18; half the Kaydes are over 11. That is 7 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 Kayde Kayleigh
England and Wales 15710,695
Ireland 32,304

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: Kayde and Kayleigh.