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Kellie vs Kelsey

American parents have registered 155,738 Kelseys since 1880, against 51,108 Kellies. Kelsey is still ahead, with 349 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kellie against Kelsey, 1880 to 2025 0 3k 6k 9k 12k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kellie Kelsey

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 116 years in which either name was published, Kelsey for 82 years and Kellie for 34 years. The lead changed hands 8 times.

Side by side

  Kellie Kelsey
Total US births 51,108155,738
Most in one year 2,65911,882
Babies in 2025 19349
Estimated living today 48,000152,000
Median age today 4731
Peak year 19691992
Best rank 130th girls23rd girls
Rank in 2025 6,116th814th
First recorded 19131891
Girls / boys 50,754 / 354150,416 / 5,322

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 Kellies alive today are over 47; half the Kelseys are over 31. That is 16 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 Kellie Kelsey
England and Wales 3227,470
Scotland 3581,404
Ireland 984776
New Zealand 66718
France 220190
Northern Ireland 51239

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: Kellie and Kelsey.