Humanverse

Kayden vs Kayleigh

American parents have registered 81,717 Kaydens since 1880, against 34,568 Kayleighs. Kayden is still ahead, with 2,735 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kayden against Kayleigh, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kayden Kayleigh

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 42 years in which either name was published, Kayden for 22 years and Kayleigh for 20 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Kayden Kayleigh
Total US births 81,71734,568
Most in one year 5,1361,450
Babies in 2025 2,735340
Estimated living today 81,00034,000
Median age today 1018
Peak year 20142009
Best rank 90th boys227th girls
Rank in 2025 135th799th
First recorded 19891984
Girls / boys 8,111 / 73,60634,561 / 7

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 Kayleighs alive today are over 18; half the Kaydens are over 10. That is 8 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 Kayden Kayleigh
England and Wales 8,57110,695
France 5,64015
Scotland 1,3103,936
Ireland 1,0102,304
Northern Ireland 335350
Belgium 331301
Poland 42

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: Kayden and Kayleigh.