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Kellie vs Kelsie

American parents have registered 51,108 Kellies since 1880, against 19,936 Kelsies. But in 2025 it was Kelsie that was commoner, 82 babies to 19.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kellie against Kelsie, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kellie Kelsie

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 113 years in which either name was published, Kelsie for 60 years and Kellie for 53 years. The lead changed hands 22 times.

17 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Kellie Kelsie
Total US births 51,10819,936
Most in one year 2,6591,228
Babies in 2025 1982
Estimated living today 48,00019,000
Median age today 4729
Peak year 19691993
Best rank 130th girls230th girls
Rank in 2025 6,116th2,239th
First recorded 19131908
Girls / boys 50,754 / 35419,591 / 345

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 Kelsies are over 29. That is 18 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 Kelsie
England and Wales 3221,841
Ireland 98477
Scotland 358353
France 220120
Northern Ireland 5168

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 Kelsie.