Humanverse

Kelli

Kelli reached its high-water mark in 1970 at number 115, and has been recorded 75,192 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 6,546th. About 71,000 Kellis are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 46.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Kelli boys named Kelli

By the numbers

Total US births
75,192
Estimated living today
71,000
Median age today
46
Peak year
1970
Best rank
115th
Rank in 2025
6,546th
First recorded
1945
Girls / boys
74,891 / 301

How old the living Kellis are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 75,192 babies given the name since 1945, about 71,000 are alive — 94 in every hundred. Roughly 830 of them are children and 2,500 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1979 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 Kellis

People named Kelli with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Kelli is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Kelli is most concentrated in South Dakota (2.0×), Idaho (2.0×), Nebraska (2.0×), Iowa (1.9×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1970

The most popular girls’ names the year Kelli peaked:

All the names of 1970

Kelli elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
Scotland girls Kelli 52 378th
Ireland girls Kelli 44 362nd
England and Wales girls Kelli 35 1,755th
England and Wales boys Kelli 3 4,685th

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.

Kelli 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 girls Kelli 6 8

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

Kelli against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

Compare Kelli with a name of your own

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.