Humanverse

Cyle vs Kyle

American parents have registered 494,713 Kyles since 1880, against 1,995 Cyles. Kyle is still ahead, with 611 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Cyle against Kyle, 1880 to 2025 0 6k 12k 18k 24k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Cyle Kyle

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

Kyle has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1881 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Cyle had 9 and Kyle had 611.

Side by side

  Cyle Kyle
Total US births 1,995494,713
Most in one year 10322,947
Babies in 2025 9611
Estimated living today 1,900468,000
Median age today 3233
Peak year 19901990
Best rank 1,042nd boys18th boys
Rank in 2025 8,243rd508th
First recorded 19601881
Girls / boys 15 / 1,9808,933 / 485,780

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 Cyle Kyle
England and Wales 5328,518

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: Cyle and Kyle.