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Kayla vs Kaylei

American parents have registered 347,144 Kaylas since 1880, against 2,134 Kayleis. Kayla is still ahead, with 838 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kayla against Kaylei, 1880 to 2025 0 5k 10k 15k 20k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kayla Kaylei

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

Kayla has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1933 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2023, when Kayla had 952 and Kaylei had 31.

Side by side

  Kayla Kaylei
Total US births 347,1442,134
Most in one year 18,580128
Babies in 2025 83815
Estimated living today 341,0002,100
Median age today 2917
Peak year 19912007
Best rank 12th girls1,704th girls
Rank in 2025 364th7,133rd
First recorded 19331986
Girls / boys 346,570 / 5742,134 / 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 Kaylas alive today are over 29; half the Kayleis are over 17. That is 12 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 Kayla Kaylei
England and Wales 6,65110

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: Kayla and Kaylei.