Humanverse

Kelcy vs Kelli

American parents have registered 75,192 Kellis since 1880, against 1,044 Kelcys. Kelli is still ahead, with 17 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kelcy against Kelli, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kelcy Kelli

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 81 years in which either name was published, Kelli for 79 years and Kelcy for 2 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Kelcy Kelli
Total US births 1,04475,192
Most in one year 663,344
Babies in 2025 517
Estimated living today 1,00071,000
Median age today 3246
Peak year 19931970
Best rank 2,176th girls115th girls
Rank in 2025 14,942nd6,546th
First recorded 19301945
Girls / boys 967 / 7774,891 / 301

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 Kellis alive today are over 46; half the Kelcys are over 32. That is 14 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 Kelli
England and Wales 1838

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 Kelli.