Humanverse

Ki vs Kimberly

American parents have registered 850,666 Kimberlys since 1880, against 535 Kis. Kimberly is still ahead, with 1,009 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ki against Kimberly, 1880 to 2025 0 10k 20k 30k 40k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ki Kimberly

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

Kimberly has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1933 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1946, when Ki had 5 and Kimberly had 136.

Side by side

  Ki Kimberly
Total US births 535850,666
Most in one year 2334,243
Babies in 2025 under 51,009
Estimated living today 510792,000
Median age today 2451
Peak year 20021970
Best rank 4,044th boys3rd girls
Rank in 2025 unranked302nd
First recorded 19461933
Girls / boys 109 / 426846,393 / 4,273

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 Kimberlys alive today are over 51; half the Kis are over 24. That is 27 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Ki Kimberly
England and Wales 951,424

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: Ki and Kimberly.