Kanye
Kanye is a boy's name that peaked in 2004, when it was the 486th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 12,008th. About 1,400 Kanyes are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 20.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Kanye boys named Kanye
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,428
- Estimated living today
- 1,400
- Median age today
- 20
- Peak year
- 2004
- Best rank
- 486th
- Rank in 2025
- 12,008th
- First recorded
- 2002
- Girls / boys
- 24 / 1,404
How old the living Kanyes are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,428 babies given the name since 2002, about 1,400 are alive — 99 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2005 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
Evidently from Igbo Kanye, although inspiration from other African languages may have contributed. The verb is a reference to Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift’s speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Where Kanye is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Kanye is most concentrated in South Carolina (3.8×), Louisiana (3.1×), Georgia (2.5×), North Carolina (2.1×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2004
The most popular boys’ names the year Kanye peaked:
Kanye elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Kanye | 145 | 599th |
| France boys | Kanye | 45 | 6,231st |
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.
Related names
Kanye 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.