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Kaelin vs Kaelyn

American parents have registered 15,648 Kaelyns since 1880, against 3,663 Kaelins. Kaelyn is still ahead, with 131 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kaelin against Kaelyn, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kaelin Kaelyn

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 52 years in which either name was published, Kaelyn for 51 years and Kaelin for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Kaelin Kaelyn
Total US births 3,66315,648
Most in one year 2811,006
Babies in 2025 11131
Estimated living today 3,60015,000
Median age today 2217
Peak year 20052009
Best rank 1,173rd girls331st girls
Rank in 2025 14,942nd1,592nd
First recorded 19811959
Girls / boys 2,737 / 92615,566 / 82

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.

Which name is older

Half of the Kaelins alive today are over 22; half the Kaelyns are over 17. That is 5 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

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 Kaelin Kaelyn
England and Wales 63146
Ireland 2124

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: Kaelin and Kaelyn.