Humanverse

Keita vs Keith

American parents have registered 440,123 Keiths since 1880, against 680 Keitas. Keith is still ahead, with 311 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Keita against Keith, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Keita Keith

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

Keith has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1888 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2017, when Keita had 16 and Keith had 587.

Side by side

  Keita Keith
Total US births 680440,123
Most in one year 4912,483
Babies in 2025 5311
Estimated living today 650338,000
Median age today 3756
Peak year 19811957
Best rank 1,726th boys36th boys
Rank in 2025 12,008th800th
First recorded 19671888
Girls / boys 189 / 4912,216 / 437,907

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 Keiths alive today are over 56; half the Keitas are over 37. That is 19 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 Keita Keith
Ireland 1310,053
England and Wales 149633
France 50220

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: Keita and Keith.