Humanverse

Kira vs Kirby

American parents have registered 40,856 Kiras since 1880, against 18,495 Kirbys. Kira is still ahead, with 801 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kira Kirby

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 143 years in which either name was published, Kirby for 91 years and Kira for 52 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Kira Kirby
Total US births 40,85618,495
Most in one year 1,396509
Babies in 2025 801101
Estimated living today 40,00014,000
Median age today 2142
Peak year 20051957
Best rank 241st girls411th boys
Rank in 2025 385th3,240th
First recorded 19381881
Girls / boys 40,829 / 273,963 / 14,532

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 Kirbys alive today are over 42; half the Kiras are over 21. That is 21 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 Kira Kirby
England and Wales 4,993279
France 7855
Ireland 2533
Northern Ireland 213

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: Kira and Kirby.