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Kilian vs Killian

American parents have registered 16,834 Killians since 1880, against 2,717 Kilians. Killian is still ahead, with 785 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kilian against Killian, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kilian Killian

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 52 years in which either name was published, Killian for 46 years and Kilian for 6 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Kilian Killian
Total US births 2,71716,834
Most in one year 2121,528
Babies in 2025 177785
Estimated living today 2,70017,000
Median age today 78
Peak year 20232017
Best rank 1,031st boys248th boys
Rank in 2025 1,166th417th
First recorded 19701915
Girls / boys 27 / 2,690615 / 16,219

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.

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 Kilian Killian
France 10,74521,960
Ireland 2133,777
Belgium 760970
England and Wales 266877
Northern Ireland 3245
Poland 1817
Scotland 19123

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: Kilian and Killian.