girls:
8k births since 1953
#1819 (68th percentile)
boys:
62.1k births since 1926
#425 (91st percentile)
overall:
70.1k births since 1926
#868 (89th percentile)
The name Kai is the #868 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 70,106 recorded births since 1926. This represents the 88.8% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 88.8% of all names). For boys, it ranks #425 (90.7% percentile) for all time with 62,078 births since 1926. For girls, it ranks #1,819 (68.2% percentile) for all time with 8,028 births since 1953.
Kai first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1926 (1926 for boys and 1953 for girls). Birth data for Kai is available in 78 out of the 98 years between 1926 and 2023 (78 years for boys and 68 years for girls). The Social Security Administration only reports birth data for years in which the name was given to at least five children of the same gender.
The name Kai has been given predominantly to boys, with 88.5% of all recorded births being male. In 2023, 94.6% of babies named Kai were boys.
For boys, Kai reached its peak popularity in 2022, achieving the 93.8% percentile (ranked #58) with 2,861 births per million. The name was most common in 2022, with 2,861 births per million (ranked 93.8% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 1984, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Kai ranks #59 for boys (93.6% percentile) with 2,701 births per million, which is 94.4% of its peak share of births.
For girls, Kai reached its peak popularity in 2021, achieving the 37.0% percentile (ranked #590) with 207 births per million. The name was most common in 2021, with 207 births per million (ranked 37.0% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 1989, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Kai ranks #678 for girls (28.4% percentile) with 160 births per million, which is 77.3% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Kai".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Kai.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Kai", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Kai.
Our model found one way to pronounce the name Kai. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 100.0% confident that Kai is pronounced as kai, which has 1 syllables.
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Our confidence scores estimate the likelihood that a particular pronunciation is the most correct for a given name spelling. These scores are derived from pronunciation dictionaries, manual verification, your feedback, and a fine-tuned large language model trained to generate name pronunciations.
For any given spelling, confidence scores across all identified pronunciations sum to 100%. However, these scores don't account for the possibility of valid pronunciations that our model hasn't identified.
The raw pronunciations shown (like K AY1) use the ARPAbet phoneme system, a standardized way to represent English speech sounds. Each symbol represents a distinct sound in American English. Visit the ARPAbet Wikipedia page to learn more about these phonetic symbols.
Pronunciation audio is generated by an open source text to speech model that has been customized to adhere to pronunciations provided in ARPAbet format, but sometimes pronunciations that differ subtly will sound identical, particularly if the only difference is the level of emphasis on a syllable or a single vowel sound.
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