girls:
186 births since 1978
#5530 (3rd percentile)
boys:
615 births since 1920
#3971 (13th percentile)
overall:
801 births since 1920
#6938 (10th percentile)
The name Kei is the #6,938 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 801 recorded births since 1920. This represents the 10.3% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 10.3% of all names). For boys, it ranks #3,971 (13.4% percentile) for all time with 615 births since 1920. For girls, it ranks #5,530 (3.2% percentile) for all time with 186 births since 1978.
Kei first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1920 (1920 for boys and 1978 for girls). Birth data for Kei is available in 49 out of the 104 years between 1920 and 2023 (46 years for boys and 28 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 Kei has been given predominantly to boys, with 76.8% of all recorded births being male. In 2023, 78.8% of babies named Kei were boys.
For boys, Kei reached its peak popularity in 2015, achieving the 3.1% percentile (ranked #877) with 16 births per million. The name was most common in 2015, with 16 births per million (ranked 3.1% percentile). Since reaching a high point around 2018, the popularity of this name for boys has been declining. Currently, Kei ranks #890 for boys (2.3% percentile) with 14 births per million, which is 88.0% of its peak share of births.
For girls, Kei reached its peak popularity in 1994, achieving the 0.8% percentile (ranked #838) with 6 births per million. The name was most common in 1994, with 6 births per million (ranked 0.8% percentile). Despite a peak around 2020, the name has seen a recent rise in popularity for girls. Currently, Kei ranks #945 for girls (0.2% percentile) with 4 births per million, which is 65.0% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Kei".
These names exclude other spelling variations of Kay. View all variations of Kay.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Kei", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. This list excludes the 6 other name spellings that we've determined are also variations of "Kay" based on shared pronunciations. Click here for more details on names that are pronounced like Kay..
Our model has identified 2 different pronunciations for the name Kei. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 73.7% confident that Kei is pronounced as kay, which has 1 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is kee, at 26.3% confidence, with 1 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 Kei? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Kei. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Kei, 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 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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