Kali
Kali reached its high-water mark in 2019 at number 241, and has been recorded 33,438 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 323rd. About 33,000 Kalis are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 15.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Kali boys named Kali
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 33,438
- Estimated living today
- 33,000
- Median age today
- 15
- Peak year
- 2019
- Best rank
- 241st
- Rank in 2025
- 323rd
- First recorded
- 1957
- Girls / boys
- 32,527 / 911
How old the living Kalis are
born that year still alive today
Of the 33,438 babies given the name since 1957, about 33,000 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 18,000 of them are children and 20 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2010 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Sanskrit
From Sanskrit काली or कालिका.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Kalis
- Kali Uchis (born 1994)American singer-songwriter
- Kali Rocha (born 1971)American actress
- Kali (born 1978)Angolan association football player
- Kali Reis (born 1986)American boxer and actress
People named Kali with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Kali is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Kali is most concentrated in Nevada (2.2×), Florida (1.7×), Louisiana (1.6×), Georgia (1.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2019
The most popular girls’ names the year Kali peaked:
Kali elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Kali +2 spellings | 895 | 891st |
| England and Wales girls | Kali | 637 | 771st |
| Scotland girls | Kali | 223 | 245th |
| Ireland girls | Kali | 107 | 347th |
| France boys | Kali | 95 | 2,868th |
| Switzerland girls | Kali | 30 | 995th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Kali | 25 | 223rd |
| Belgium girls | Kali | 10 | 1,464th |
| England and Wales boys | Kali | 7 | 3,848th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Kali: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Kali | 9 | 0.001% | 859th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Kali | 20 | 0.005% | 386th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Kali | 1 | 0.002% | 188th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
Kali among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Kali | 6 | 8 |
| Finland girls | Kali | — | 5 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Kali against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.