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Kelcy vs Kelley

American parents have registered 52,385 Kelleys since 1880, against 1,044 Kelcys. Kelley is still ahead, with 24 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kelcy against Kelley, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kelcy Kelley

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

Kelley has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1882 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2009, when Kelcy had 20 and Kelley had 70.

Side by side

  Kelcy Kelley
Total US births 1,04452,385
Most in one year 662,086
Babies in 2025 524
Estimated living today 1,00047,000
Median age today 3250
Peak year 19931968
Best rank 2,176th girls168th girls
Rank in 2025 14,942nd7,133rd
First recorded 19301882
Girls / boys 967 / 7746,099 / 6,286

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 Kelleys alive today are over 50; half the Kelcys are over 32. That is 18 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 Kelcy Kelley
England and Wales 1816

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: Kelcy and Kelley.