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Kaleb vs Kaley

American parents have registered 86,851 Kalebs since 1880, against 13,707 Kaleys. Kaleb is still ahead, with 1,143 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kaleb against Kaley, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kaleb Kaley

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 59 years in which either name was published, Kaleb for 54 years and Kaley for 5 years. The lead changed hands 5 times.

Side by side

  Kaleb Kaley
Total US births 86,85113,707
Most in one year 3,829578
Babies in 2025 1,14338
Estimated living today 85,00013,000
Median age today 1825
Peak year 20072003
Best rank 113th boys495th girls
Rank in 2025 295th3,832nd
First recorded 19701967
Girls / boys 202 / 86,64913,682 / 25

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 Kaleys alive today are over 25; half the Kalebs are over 18. That is 7 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 Kaleb Kaley
England and Wales 2,724102
Scotland 42623
France 1505
Northern Ireland 1333
Ireland 10810
Belgium 125

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: Kaleb and Kaley.