Humanverse

Kalen

About 6,096 American babies have been named Kalen since 1952, most of them around 1998. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 2,077th. About 5,900 Kalens are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 25.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 50 100 150 200 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Kalen boys named Kalen

Girls and boys called Kalen

Share of the name given to girls, 1880 to 2025 0% 25% 50% 75% 100% 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Kalen crossed from girls to boys in 1978, and has stayed there for 48 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 100% boys, and in 2025 it was 89%.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 49 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
6,096
Estimated living today
5,900
Median age today
25
Peak year
1998
Best rank
858th
Rank in 2025
2,077th
First recorded
1952
Girls / boys
1,467 / 4,629

How old the living Kalens are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 60 120 180 240 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 6,096 babies given the name since 1952, about 5,900 are alive — 97 in every hundred. Roughly 1,700 of them are children and 30 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2000 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 Kalen is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Kalen is most concentrated in Hawaii (4.3×), Georgia (2.6×), Texas (2.5×), California (2.1×).

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

Names of 1998

The most popular boys’ names the year Kalen peaked:

All the names of 1998

Kalen elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
England and Wales boys Kalen 315 1,241st
France boys Kalen 165 1,546th
Ireland boys Kalen 9 629th
Scotland boys Kalen 9 425th

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.

Related names

Kalen against another name

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

Compare Kalen with a name of your own

Try it on yourself

Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.