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Kellin vs Kelsey

American parents have registered 155,738 Kelseys since 1880, against 1,279 Kellins. Kelsey is still ahead, with 349 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kellin 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 2021, when Kellin had 70 and Kelsey had 488.

Side by side

  Kellin Kelsey
Total US births 1,279155,738
Most in one year 11011,882
Babies in 2025 44349
Estimated living today 1,300152,000
Median age today 1031
Peak year 20141992
Best rank 1,473rd boys23rd girls
Rank in 2025 2,833rd814th
First recorded 19821891
Girls / boys 94 / 1,185150,416 / 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 Kellins are over 10. That is 21 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 Kellin Kelsey
England and Wales 167,470

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: Kellin and Kelsey.