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Ki vs Kirk

American parents have registered 68,264 Kirks since 1880, against 535 Kis. Kirk is still ahead, with 52 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ki against Kirk, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ki Kirk

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

Kirk 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 2022, when Ki had 13 and Kirk had 55.

Side by side

  Ki Kirk
Total US births 53568,264
Most in one year 232,560
Babies in 2025 under 552
Estimated living today 51055,000
Median age today 2457
Peak year 20021962
Best rank 4,044th boys138th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked2,539th
First recorded 19461880
Girls / boys 109 / 426197 / 68,067

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 Kirks alive today are over 57; half the Kis are over 24. That is 33 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 Kirk
England and Wales 95423

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 Kirk.