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Kinsey vs Kinsley

American parents have registered 50,243 Kinsleys since 1880, against 8,113 Kinseys. Kinsley is still ahead, with 2,683 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kinsey against Kinsley, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kinsey Kinsley

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 65 years in which either name was published, Kinsey for 44 years and Kinsley for 21 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Kinsey Kinsley
Total US births 8,11350,243
Most in one year 3194,066
Babies in 2025 532,683
Estimated living today 8,00050,000
Median age today 217
Peak year 20112017
Best rank 842nd girls59th girls
Rank in 2025 3,067th93rd
First recorded 19171978
Girls / boys 7,818 / 29550,016 / 227

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 Kinseys alive today are over 21; half the Kinsleys are over 7. That is 14 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 Kinsey Kinsley
France 90945
England and Wales 54117

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: Kinsey and Kinsley.