girls:
98.5k births since 1885
#373 (93rd percentile)
boys:
3.9k births since 1882
#1981 (57th percentile)
overall:
102.4k births since 1882
#668 (91st percentile)
The name Kay is the #668 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 102,440 recorded births since 1882. This represents the 91.4% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 91.4% of all names). For girls, it ranks #373 (93.5% percentile) for all time with 98,540 births since 1885. For boys, it ranks #1,981 (56.8% percentile) for all time with 3,900 births since 1882.
Kay first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1882 (1882 for boys and 1885 for girls). Birth data for Kay is available in 140 out of the 142 years between 1882 and 2023 (139 years for girls and 110 years for boys). 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 Kay has been given almost exclusively to girls, with 96.2% of all recorded births being female. In 2023, 78.3% of babies named Kay were girls. Interestingly, until around 1885, the name was more popular for boys (100.0% boys from 1882 to 1884), but since then it has been more commonly used for girls (96.2% girls from 1885 to 2023).
For girls, Kay reached its peak popularity in 1941, achieving the 88.3% percentile (ranked #70) with 2,840 births per million. The name was most common in 1939, with 2,875 births per million (ranked 87.1% percentile). Since reaching a high point in 2018, the popularity of this name for girls has been declining. Currently, Kay ranks #905 for girls (4.4% percentile) with 27 births per million, which is 0.9% of its peak share of births.
For boys, Kay reached its peak popularity in 1934, achieving the 28.7% percentile (ranked #377) with 150 births per million. The name was most common in 1934, with 150 births per million (ranked 28.7% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2014, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Kay ranks #903 for boys (0.9% percentile) with 7 births per million, which is 4.7% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Kay".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Kay.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Kay", 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 Kay.
Our model found one way to pronounce the name Kay. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 100.0% confident that Kay is pronounced as kay, 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 EY1) 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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