Humanverse

Kia vs Kiaya

American parents have registered 7,809 Kias since 1880, against 858 Kiayas. Kia is still ahead, with 12 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kia against Kiaya, 1880 to 2025 0 100 200 300 400 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kia Kiaya

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

Of the 69 years in which either name was published, Kia for 67 years and Kiaya for 2 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Kia Kiaya
Total US births 7,809858
Most in one year 35762
Babies in 2025 126
Estimated living today 7,500850
Median age today 3823
Peak year 19932002
Best rank 647th girls2,527th girls
Rank in 2025 8,362nd13,208th
First recorded 19561988
Girls / boys 7,613 / 196858 / 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 Kias alive today are over 38; half the Kiayas are over 23. That is 15 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 Kia Kiaya
England and Wales 1,593128
Scotland 274
Ireland 133

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: Kia and Kiaya.