Keela vs Keely

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Keela Keely

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 70 years in which either name was published, Keely for 69 years and Keela for 1 year. The lead changed hands once.

• 1956 Keela ahead
• 1957–2025 Keely ahead

Side by side

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 Keelas alive today are over 39; half the Keelys are over 28. That is 11 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.

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

• Keely vs Kelly
• Keela vs Keegan
• Keela vs Keenan
• Keela vs Keeley
• Keela vs Keelan
• Keela vs Keesha
• Keely vs Keegan
• Keely vs Keenan