Humanverse

Kelly vs Kellyann

American parents have registered 556,365 Kellys since 1880, against 1,843 Kellyanns. Kelly is still ahead, with 403 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kelly Kellyann

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 2021, when Kelly had 438 and Kellyann had 7.

Side by side

  Kelly Kellyann
Total US births 556,3651,843
Most in one year 20,19769
Babies in 2025 403under 5
Estimated living today 510,0001,700
Median age today 4845
Peak year 19771969
Best rank 10th girls1,385th girls
Rank in 2025 851stunranked
First recorded 18801959
Girls / boys 473,965 / 82,4001,843 / 0

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 Kellyanns are over 45. That is 3 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 Kelly Kellyann
France 25,77020
Scotland 6,30367
England and Wales 4,35315

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: Kelly and Kellyann.