Humanverse

Kaia vs Kaila

American parents have registered 20,967 Kaias since 1880, against 14,556 Kailas. Kaia is still ahead, with 1,623 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kaia against Kaila, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kaia Kaila

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 66 years in which either name was published, Kaia for 35 years and Kaila for 31 years. The lead changed hands 12 times.

9 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Kaia Kaila
Total US births 20,96714,556
Most in one year 1,680698
Babies in 2025 1,62388
Estimated living today 21,00014,000
Median age today 727
Peak year 20241991
Best rank 180th girls369th girls
Rank in 2025 193rd2,117th
First recorded 19551964
Girls / boys 20,909 / 5814,556 / 0

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 Kailas alive today are over 27; half the Kaias are over 7. That is 20 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 Kaia Kaila
England and Wales 1,716461
France 140 Kaïa1,065 Kaïla
Switzerland 26156
Ireland 26714
Scotland 13376
Poland 8411
Northern Ireland 7116
Belgium 246 Kaïla

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: Kaia and Kaila.