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Keegan vs Keely

American parents have registered 42,324 Keegans since 1880, against 12,719 Keelys. Keegan is still ahead, with 497 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Keegan Keely

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 69 years in which either name was published, Keegan for 43 years and Keely for 26 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Keegan Keely
Total US births 42,32412,719
Most in one year 1,888555
Babies in 2025 49763
Estimated living today 42,00012,000
Median age today 1828
Peak year 20071997
Best rank 222nd boys455th girls
Rank in 2025 621st2,719th
First recorded 19651957
Girls / boys 3,805 / 38,51912,698 / 21

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 Keelys alive today are over 28; half the Keegans are over 18. That is 10 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 Keegan Keely
England and Wales 2,5661,089
Ireland 263115
Scotland 25048
Northern Ireland 10347

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: Keegan and Keely.