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Kobi vs Koby

American parents have registered 6,135 Kobys since 1880, against 3,118 Kobis. But in 2025 it was Kobi that was commoner, 101 babies to 66.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kobi against Koby, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kobi Koby

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 66 years in which either name was published, Koby for 56 years and Kobi for 10 years. The lead changed hands 5 times.

Side by side

  Kobi Koby
Total US births 3,1186,135
Most in one year 191419
Babies in 2025 10166
Estimated living today 3,1006,000
Median age today 1423
Peak year 20002000
Best rank 1,271st boys531st boys
Rank in 2025 2,332nd2,167th
First recorded 19581958
Girls / boys 1,147 / 1,97197 / 6,038

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 Kobys alive today are over 23; half the Kobis are over 14. That is 9 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 Kobi Koby
England and Wales 2,0111,665
Scotland 12292
Ireland 6874
Northern Ireland 8535

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: Kobi and Koby.