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Kieran vs Kieren

American parents have registered 19,218 Kierans since 1880, against 636 Kierens. Kieran is still ahead, with 828 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kieran against Kieren, 1880 to 2025 0 250 500 750 1k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kieran Kieren

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

Kieran has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1918 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1990, when Kieran had 121 and Kieren had 11.

Side by side

  Kieran Kieren
Total US births 19,218636
Most in one year 82836
Babies in 2025 82816
Estimated living today 19,000630
Median age today 1517
Peak year 20252011
Best rank 389th boys3,695th boys
Rank in 2025 389th5,608th
First recorded 19181990
Girls / boys 1,605 / 17,613118 / 518

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 Kierens alive today are over 17; half the Kierans are over 15. That is 2 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 Kieran Kieren
England and Wales 30,5131,337
Scotland 7,419248
France 1,29010

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: Kieran and Kieren.