Humanverse

Kaila vs Kayla

American parents have registered 347,144 Kaylas since 1880, against 14,556 Kailas. Kayla is still ahead, with 838 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kaila against Kayla, 1880 to 2025 0 5k 10k 15k 20k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kaila Kayla

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

Kayla has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1933 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2024, when Kaila had 117 and Kayla had 935.

Side by side

  Kaila Kayla
Total US births 14,556347,144
Most in one year 69818,580
Babies in 2025 88838
Estimated living today 14,000341,000
Median age today 2729
Peak year 19911991
Best rank 369th girls12th girls
Rank in 2025 2,117th364th
First recorded 19641933
Girls / boys 14,556 / 0346,570 / 574

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 Kaylas alive today are over 29; half the Kailas are over 27. That is 2 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 Kaila Kayla
England and Wales 4616,651
France 1,065 Kaïla4,370
Ireland 142,609
Scotland 762,215
Switzerland 56576
Northern Ireland 16586
Belgium 6 Kaïla498
Poland 11136

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: Kaila and Kayla.