Humanverse

Kaye vs Kaylee

American parents have registered 140,601 Kaylees since 1880, against 13,707 Kayes. Kaylee is still ahead, with 1,205 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kaye 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

Of the 119 years in which either name was published, Kaye for 75 years and Kaylee for 44 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Kaye Kaylee
Total US births 13,707140,601
Most in one year 5477,225
Babies in 2025 181,205
Estimated living today 9,000139,000
Median age today 7118
Peak year 19472009
Best rank 344th girls26th girls
Rank in 2025 6,325th255th
First recorded 19011943
Girls / boys 13,204 / 503140,425 / 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 Kayes alive today are over 71; half the Kaylees are over 18. That is 53 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 Kaye Kaylee
England and Wales 841,231
Scotland 132193

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: Kaye and Kaylee.