girls:
67 births since 1991
#5649 (1st percentile)
boys:
218 births since 1998
#4368 (5th percentile)
overall:
285 births since 1991
#7454 (4th percentile)
The name Kalai is the #7,454 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 285 recorded births since 1991. This represents the 3.7% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 3.7% of all names). For boys, it ranks #4,368 (4.7% percentile) for all time with 218 births since 1998. For girls, it ranks #5,649 (1.1% percentile) for all time with 67 births since 1991.
Kalai first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1991 (1991 for girls and 1998 for boys). Birth data for Kalai is available in 26 out of the 33 years between 1991 and 2023 (23 years for boys and 10 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 Kalai has been given predominantly to boys, with 76.5% of all recorded births being male. In 2023, 100.0% of babies named Kalai were boys. Interestingly, until around 1998, the name was more popular for girls (100.0% girls from 1991 to 1997), but since then it has been more commonly used for boys (79.6% boys from 1998 to 2023).
For boys, Kalai reached its peak popularity in 2000, achieving the 1.1% percentile (ranked #805) with 7 births per million. The name was most common in 2020, with 7 births per million (ranked 0.9% percentile). Despite a peak around 2017, the name has seen a recent rise in popularity for boys. Currently, Kalai ranks #911 for boys (0.0% percentile) with 3 births per million, which is 38.9% of its peak share of births.
For girls, Kalai reached its peak popularity in 2019, achieving the 0.5% percentile (ranked #940) with 5 births per million. The name was most common in 2019, with 5 births per million (ranked 0.5% percentile). There have been no recorded female births with this name since 2022.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Kalai".
These names exclude other spelling variations of Kalei. View all variations of Kalei.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Kalai", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. This list excludes the 7 other name spellings that we've determined are also variations of "Kalei" based on shared pronunciations. Click here for more details on names that are pronounced like Kalei..
Our model has identified 3 different pronunciations for the name Kalai. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 52.4% confident that Kalai is pronounced as kuh-LAI, which has 2 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is kuh-LAY, at 31.0% confidence, with 2 syllables.
If none of the pronunciations above sound right to you, could you please check whether any of these related pronunciations should be applied to the name Kalai? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Kalai. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Kalai, please vote using the thumbs up button.
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 AH0 L 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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