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Kirsten vs Kirstyn

American parents have registered 53,393 Kirstens since 1880, against 2,309 Kirstyns. Kirsten is still ahead, with 60 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kirsten 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

Kirsten has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1937 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2021, when Kirsten had 57 and Kirstyn had 11.

Side by side

  Kirsten Kirstyn
Total US births 53,3932,309
Most in one year 1,938132
Babies in 2025 60under 5
Estimated living today 51,0002,300
Median age today 3427
Peak year 19911990
Best rank 154th girls1,247th girls
Rank in 2025 2,822ndunranked
First recorded 19371975
Girls / boys 53,181 / 2122,309 / 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 Kirstens alive today are over 34; half the Kirstyns are over 27. That is 7 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 Kirsten Kirstyn
Scotland 2,845120
England and Wales 2,23791
Ireland 3917
Northern Ireland 2197

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: Kirsten and Kirstyn.