Keir
The boy's name Keir has been in the national records since 1963, with 1,117 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 9,714th. About 1,000 Keirs are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 37.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Keir boys named Keir
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,117
- Estimated living today
- 1,000
- Median age today
- 37
- Peak year
- 1970
- Best rank
- 1,023rd
- Rank in 2025
- 9,714th
- First recorded
- 1963
- Girls / boys
- 64 / 1,053
How old the living Keirs are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,117 babies given the name since 1963, about 1,000 are alive — 94 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1988 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
or Old Norse. Hanks (2006) derived the name from xpi/cel-bry-pro *kaɨr (“a fort”), possibly via Scots keir.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Keirs
- Keir Starmer (born 1962)Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2024 to 2026
- Keir Hardie (1856–1915)Scottish socialist and labour leader
- Keir Dullea (born 1936)American actor
- Keir Gilchrist (born 1992)Canadian actor
- Keir O'Donnell (born 1978)Australian–American actor
People named Keir with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Keir is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Keir is most concentrated in New York (5.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1970
The most popular boys’ names the year Keir peaked:
Keir elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scotland boys | Keir | 1,134 | 91st |
| England and Wales boys | Keir | 829 | 327th |
| England and Wales girls | Keir | 8 | 2,701st |
| Northern Ireland boys | Keir | 3 | 418th |
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
Keir against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
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.