Keith
The boy's name Keith has been in the national records since 1888, with 440,123 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 800th. About 338,000 Keiths are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 56.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Keith boys named Keith
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 440,123
- Estimated living today
- 338,000
- Median age today
- 56
- Peak year
- 1957
- Best rank
- 36th
- Rank in 2025
- 800th
- First recorded
- 1888
- Girls / boys
- 2,216 / 437,907
How old the living Keiths are
born that year still alive today
Of the 440,123 babies given the name since 1888, about 338,000 are alive — 77 in every hundred. Roughly 11,000 of them are children and 87,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1969 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 a surname
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Keiths
- Keith Richards (born 1943)British musician, guitarist of the Rolling Stones
- Keith Haring (1958–1990)American artist and social activist
- Keith Jarrett (born 1945)American jazz/classical pianist and composer
- Keith Emerson (1944–2016)British recording artist; keyboard player and composer
- Keith Moon (1946–1978)English rock musician, drummer of The Who
- Keith Flint (1969–2019)British singer and musician
- Keith Ferguson (born 1972)American voice actor
- Keith David (born 1956)American actor
People named Keith with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Keith is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Keith is most concentrated in the District of Columbia (1.8×), North Dakota (1.6×), South Dakota (1.6×), Delaware (1.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1957
The most popular boys’ names the year Keith peaked:
Keith elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland boys | Keith | 10,053 | 17th |
| Scotland boys | Keith | 2,854 | 38th |
| New Zealand boys | Keith | 2,175 | 34th |
| England and Wales boys | Keith | 633 | 379th |
| France boys | Keith | 195 | 590th |
| Belgium boys | Keith | 98 | 557th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Keith | 66 | 143rd |
| France girls | Keith | 25 | 5,786th |
| Poland boys | Keith | 2 birth registrations | 564th |
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.
Keith: rank by region
In 2014, Keith was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Keith | 868 | 5 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Keith 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 | Keith | 37 | 80 |
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.
Where Keith lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 384 men called Keith were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alicante/Alacant | Keith | 126 | 0.125 | 661 |
| Almería | Keith | 31 | 0.079 | 868 |
| Málaga | Keith | 54 | 0.062 | 922 |
| Palmas, Las | Keith | 24 | 0.041 | 1,834 |
| Murcia | Keith | 31 | 0.039 | 1,262 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Keith | 16 | 0.030 | 2,406 |
Listed in 9 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 43 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Keith 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.