Humanverse

Kira vs Kirstyn

American parents have registered 40,856 Kiras since 1880, against 2,309 Kirstyns. Kira is still ahead, with 801 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kira against Kirstyn, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kira Kirstyn

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

Kira has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1938 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1990, when Kira had 449 and Kirstyn had 132.

Side by side

  Kira Kirstyn
Total US births 40,8562,309
Most in one year 1,396132
Babies in 2025 801under 5
Estimated living today 40,0002,300
Median age today 2127
Peak year 20051990
Best rank 241st girls1,247th girls
Rank in 2025 385thunranked
First recorded 19381975
Girls / boys 40,829 / 272,309 / 0

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 Kirstyns alive today are over 27; half the Kiras are over 21. That is 6 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 Kira Kirstyn
England and Wales 4,99391
Scotland 356120
Ireland 2537
Northern Ireland 217

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: Kira and Kirstyn.