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Caitlyn vs Kaitlyn

American parents have registered 166,921 Kaitlyns since 1880, against 52,637 Caitlyns. Kaitlyn is still ahead, with 340 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Caitlyn against Kaitlyn, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Caitlyn Kaitlyn

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 55 years in which either name was published, Kaitlyn for 50 years and Caitlyn for 5 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Caitlyn Kaitlyn
Total US births 52,637166,921
Most in one year 2,9438,771
Babies in 2025 71340
Estimated living today 52,000165,000
Median age today 2625
Peak year 19982000
Best rank 115th girls30th girls
Rank in 2025 2,485th799th
First recorded 19681971
Girls / boys 52,603 / 34166,689 / 232

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.

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 Caitlyn Kaitlyn
England and Wales 5,3335,160
Scotland 1,189960
New Zealand 454358
Ireland 246488
Northern Ireland 223271
France 160175
Belgium 10428

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: Caitlyn and Kaitlyn.