Humanverse

Keith vs Keitha

American parents have registered 440,123 Keiths since 1880, against 1,449 Keithas. Keith is still ahead, with 311 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Keith Keitha

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 1920, when Keith had 814 and Keitha had 18.

Side by side

  Keith Keitha
Total US births 440,1231,449
Most in one year 12,48363
Babies in 2025 311under 5
Estimated living today 338,0001,100
Median age today 5656
Peak year 19571969
Best rank 36th boys1,480th girls
Rank in 2025 800thunranked
First recorded 18881915
Girls / boys 2,216 / 437,9071,449 / 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.

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 Keith Keitha
England and Wales 6333

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: Keith and Keitha.