Humanverse

Kimberley vs Kimberlie

American parents have registered 38,278 Kimberleys since 1880, against 3,678 Kimberlies. Kimberley is still ahead, with 21 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kimberley against Kimberlie, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kimberley Kimberlie

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

Kimberley has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1941 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2022, when Kimberley had 14 and Kimberlie had 7.

Side by side

  Kimberley Kimberlie
Total US births 38,2783,678
Most in one year 2,008147
Babies in 2025 216
Estimated living today 35,0003,400
Median age today 5652
Peak year 19671970
Best rank 166th girls894th girls
Rank in 2025 5,722nd13,208th
First recorded 19411951
Girls / boys 38,043 / 2353,678 / 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 Kimberleys alive today are over 56; half the Kimberlies are over 52. That is 4 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 Kimberley Kimberlie
France 6,86025
England and Wales 5,2023

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: Kimberley and Kimberlie.