Humanverse

Kaylee vs Kayley

American parents have registered 140,601 Kaylees since 1880, against 8,586 Kayleys. Kaylee is still ahead, with 1,205 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kaylee Kayley

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 1977, when Kaylee had 18 and Kayley had 5.

Side by side

  Kaylee Kayley
Total US births 140,6018,586
Most in one year 7,225461
Babies in 2025 1,20545
Estimated living today 139,0008,500
Median age today 1822
Peak year 20091999
Best rank 26th girls548th girls
Rank in 2025 255th3,389th
First recorded 19431977
Girls / boys 140,425 / 1768,586 / 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 Kayleys alive today are over 22; half the Kaylees are over 18. That is 4 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 Kaylee Kayley
England and Wales 1,2311,273
France 7455
Scotland 193273
Belgium 36626
Ireland 259123
Northern Ireland 4821

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: Kaylee and Kayley.