Kingston vs Kinley
American parents have registered 46,599 Kingstons since 1880, against 20,313 Kinleys. Kingston is still ahead, with 1,725 babies in 2025.
Babies given each name, 1880–2025
Kingston Kinley
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 71 years in which either name was published, Kingston for 41 years and Kinley for 30 years. The lead changed hands 19 times.
- 1917–1919 Kinley ahead
- 1921–1947 Kingston ahead
- 1959–1962 Kinley ahead
- 1976–1984 Kingston ahead
- 1992–2006 Kinley ahead, apart from one short spell
- 2007–2025 Kingston ahead, apart from one short spell
12 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.
Side by side
| Kingston | Kinley | |
|---|---|---|
| Total US births | 46,599 | 20,313 |
| Most in one year | 3,422 | 1,769 |
| Babies in 2025 | 1,725 | 409 |
| Estimated living today | 46,000 | 20,000 |
| Median age today | 8 | 11 |
| Peak year | 2021 | 2012 |
| Best rank | 112th boys | 180th girls |
| Rank in 2025 | 204th | 691st |
| First recorded | 1919 | 1917 |
| Girls / boys | 193 / 46,406 | 19,959 / 354 |
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 Kinleys alive today are over 11; half the Kingstons are over 8. That is 3 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.
Where each one is strongest
- Kingston Hawaii (3.2×), Nevada (3.0×), South Carolina (2.7×)
- Kinley Alaska (4.1×), North Dakota (2.8×), Arkansas (2.5×)
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 | Kingston | Kinley |
|---|---|---|
| England and Wales | 388 | 88 |
| France | 170 | 5 |
| Scotland | 21 | 6 |
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: Kingston and Kinley.