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Kelise vs Kelsey

American parents have registered 155,738 Kelseys since 1880, against 669 Kelises. Kelsey is still ahead, with 349 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kelise against Kelsey, 1880 to 2025 0 3k 6k 9k 12k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kelise Kelsey

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

Kelsey has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1891 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2020, when Kelise had 34 and Kelsey had 589.

Side by side

  Kelise Kelsey
Total US births 669155,738
Most in one year 5111,882
Babies in 2025 7349
Estimated living today 660152,000
Median age today 1531
Peak year 20071992
Best rank 3,289th girls23rd girls
Rank in 2025 11,932nd814th
First recorded 19941891
Girls / boys 669 / 0150,416 / 5,322

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 Kelseys alive today are over 31; half the Kelises are over 15. That is 16 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 Kelsey
England and Wales 1877,470
Scotland 31,404

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 Kelsey.