Kila vs Kile

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Kila Kile

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 72 years in which either name was published, Kile for 39 years and Kila for 33 years. The lead changed hands 17 times.

• 1920–1969 Kile ahead, apart from one short spell
• 1972–1979 Kila ahead
• 1983–2003 Kile ahead
• 2004–2025 Kila ahead, apart from 2 short spells

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

Side by side

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 Kiles alive today are over 32; half the Kilas are over 29. That is 3 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

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

• Kile vs Kyle
• Kila vs Kiley
• Kila vs Killian
• Kila vs Kilian
• Kila vs Kilee
• Kila vs Kileigh
• Kile vs Kiley
• Kile vs Killian