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Kingsley vs Kingston

American parents have registered 46,599 Kingstons since 1880, against 8,874 Kingsleys. Kingston is still ahead, with 1,725 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kingsley against Kingston, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kingsley Kingston

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 114 years in which either name was published, Kingsley for 89 years and Kingston for 25 years. The lead changed hands 5 times.

Side by side

  Kingsley Kingston
Total US births 8,87446,599
Most in one year 6673,422
Babies in 2025 3151,725
Estimated living today 8,40046,000
Median age today 88
Peak year 20162021
Best rank 584th boys112th boys
Rank in 2025 1,095th204th
First recorded 19071919
Girls / boys 2,165 / 6,709193 / 46,406

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 Kingsley Kingston
England and Wales 2,193388
France 1,095170
Scotland 6021
Ireland 3621
Northern Ireland 187

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: Kingsley and Kingston.