Humanverse

Kaylei vs Kayleigh

American parents have registered 34,568 Kayleighs since 1880, against 2,134 Kayleis. Kayleigh is still ahead, with 340 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kaylei 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 2006, when Kaylei had 126 and Kayleigh had 1,230.

Side by side

  Kaylei Kayleigh
Total US births 2,13434,568
Most in one year 1281,450
Babies in 2025 15340
Estimated living today 2,10034,000
Median age today 1718
Peak year 20072009
Best rank 1,704th girls227th girls
Rank in 2025 7,133rd799th
First recorded 19861984
Girls / boys 2,134 / 034,561 / 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.

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 Kaylei Kayleigh
England and Wales 1010,695

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: Kaylei and Kayleigh.