Kai

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Kai boys named Kai

Girls and boys called Kai

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 8,478 girls and 70,232 boys in all, and in 2025 the split was 234 to 3,768.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 69 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.

By the numbers

Total US births

78,710

Estimated living today

78,000

Median age today

8

Peak year

2022

Best rank

59th

Rank in 2025

93rd

First recorded

1926

Girls / boys

8,478 / 70,232

How old the living Kais are

born that year still alive today

Of the 78,710 babies given the name since 1926, about 78,000 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 61,000 of them are children and 160 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2017 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where the name comes from

Origin Germanic languages

Taken into regular use in the 1990s, with earlier popularity peaks in Scandinavia and Germany. The medieval Danish Kaj is possibly of Roman origin, Latinized as Caius, like the rare medieval English male given name Kay. The German Kai may also derive from a West Frisian pet form of Gerard, Cornelius, Nicholas, or Kampe "warrior". In the U.S. Kai has also been explained as Hawaiian kai (“sea”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Kais

• Kai Siegbahn (1918–2007)Swedish physicist
• Kai Havertz (born 1999)German association football player
• Kai Hansen (born 1963)German guitarist and singer
• Zou Kai (born 1988)Chinese artistic gymnast
• Kai Wegner (born 1972)German politician
• Kai Shibato (born 1995)Japanese association football player
• Liang Kai (1200–1300)Chinese artist
• Kai Cenat (born 2001)American internet personality and online streamer

People named Kai with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Kai is most common

• CA13,143
• TX6,104
• FL6,015
• NY4,468
• GA2,586
• WA2,526
• IL2,292
• PA2,274
• VA1,986
• OH1,968

Relative to how many babies each state records, Kai is most concentrated in Hawaii (5.0×), Nevada (3.2×), Florida (2.3×), Alaska (2.3×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 2022

The most popular boys’ names the year Kai peaked:

• Liam
• Noah
• Oliver
• James
• Elijah
• William

All the names of 2022

Kai elsewhere

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Kai: births by region

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

By canton, Kai is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.07% of children were given it – 241 of them.

Kai: rank by region

In 2025, Kai was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.

In 2025, Kai was given 2 times or more in 9 regions of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Kai appears in the lists for Province of West Flanders (162nd), Brussels-Capital Region (265th) and Province of Antwerp (290th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.

Kai by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Kai among the living

How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.

A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026, the Netherlands on 1 January 2018 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.

Where Kai lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 3,199 men called Kai were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Men: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 35 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 17 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Kaitlyn
• Kaitlin
• Kaiden
• Kailey
• Kaia
• Kaitlynn
• Kaila
• Kailyn
• Kailee
• Kailani
• Kairo
• Kaiya

Kai against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Kai vs Kaitlyn
• Kai vs Kaitlin
• Kai vs Kaiden
• Kai vs Kailey
• Kai vs Kaia
• Kai vs Kaitlynn

Compare Kai with a name of your own