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Kelise vs Kelly

American parents have registered 556,365 Kellys since 1880, against 669 Kelises. Kelly is still ahead, with 403 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kelise against Kelly, 1880 to 2025 0 6k 12k 18k 24k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kelise Kelly

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

Kelly has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2020, when Kelise had 34 and Kelly had 476.

Side by side

  Kelise Kelly
Total US births 669556,365
Most in one year 5120,197
Babies in 2025 7403
Estimated living today 660510,000
Median age today 1548
Peak year 20071977
Best rank 3,289th girls10th girls
Rank in 2025 11,932nd851st
First recorded 19941880
Girls / boys 669 / 0473,965 / 82,400

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 Kellys alive today are over 48; half the Kelises are over 15. That is 33 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 Kelise Kelly
Scotland 36,303
England and Wales 1874,353

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: Kelise and Kelly.