Kelly

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Kelly boys named Kelly

Girls and boys called Kelly

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Kelly crossed from boys to girls in 1957, and has stayed there for 69 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 95% girls, and in 2025 it was 79%.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 120 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

556,365

Estimated living today

510,000

Median age today

48

Peak year

1977

Best rank

10th

Rank in 2025

851st

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

473,965 / 82,400

How old the living Kellys are

born that year still alive today

Of the 556,365 babies given the name since 1880, about 510,000 are alive — 92 in every hundred. Roughly 14,000 of them are children and 33,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1977 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 a surname

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

Notable Kellys

• Kelly Clarkson (born 1982)American singer-songwriter
• Kelly Rowland (born 1981)American singer, songwriter and actress
• Kelly Preston (1962–2020)American actress
• Kelly Brook (born 1979)British actress and model
• Kelly Macdonald (born 1976)Scottish actress
• Kelly Hu (born 1968)American actress
• Kelly McGillis (born 1957)American actress
• Kelly Marie Tran (born 1989)American actress

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

Where Kelly is most common

• CA55,235
• NY38,660
• OH32,595
• PA32,550
• IL29,867
• TX28,705
• MI27,830
• NJ18,615
• FL17,970
• WI15,100

Relative to how many babies each state records, Kelly is most concentrated in Wyoming (1.6×), Montana (1.4×), Delaware (1.4×), Alaska (1.4×).

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

Names of 1977

The most popular girls’ names the year Kelly peaked:

• Jennifer
• Melissa
• Amy
• Jessica
• Heather
• Angela

All the names of 1977

Kelly 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.

Kelly: 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, Kelly is most concentrated in Fribourg, where 0.09% of children were given it – 62 of them.

Kelly: rank by region

In 2022, Kelly was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 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.

Kelly by city

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

Kelly 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 – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – 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 Kelly lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 780 women called Kelly were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Women: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 32 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 20 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

• Kelsey
• Kelli
• Kelley
• Kelvin
• Kellie
• Kelsie
• Kellen
• Kellan
• Kelsi
• Kelton
• Kelsea
• Kelby

Kelly against another name

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

• Kelly vs Kelsey
• Kelly vs Kelli
• Kelly vs Kelley
• Kelly vs Kelvin
• Kelly vs Kellie
• Kelly vs Kelsie

Compare Kelly with a name of your own