Humanverse

Kolbie vs Kolby

American parents have registered 13,001 Kolbys since 1880, against 1,907 Kolbies. Kolby is still ahead, with 207 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kolbie against Kolby, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kolbie Kolby

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

Kolby has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1968 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Kolbie had 109 and Kolby had 207.

Side by side

  Kolbie Kolby
Total US births 1,90713,001
Most in one year 109781
Babies in 2025 109207
Estimated living today 1,90013,000
Median age today 1221
Peak year 20252001
Best rank 1,902nd girls359th boys
Rank in 2025 1,902nd1,222nd
First recorded 19881968
Girls / boys 1,475 / 4321,351 / 11,650

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 Kolbys alive today are over 21; half the Kolbies are over 12. That is 9 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 Kolbie Kolby
England and Wales 61243

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: Kolbie and Kolby.