girls:
46.1k births since 1919
#612 (89th percentile)
boys:
6.3k births since 1882
#1491 (67th percentile)
overall:
52.3k births since 1882
#1053 (86th percentile)
The name Kelley is the #1,053 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 52,337 recorded births since 1882. This represents the 86.4% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 86.4% of all names). For girls, it ranks #612 (89.3% percentile) for all time with 46,068 births since 1919. For boys, it ranks #1,491 (67.5% percentile) for all time with 6,269 births since 1882.
Kelley first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1882 (1882 for boys and 1919 for girls). Birth data for Kelley is available in 133 out of the 142 years between 1882 and 2023 (133 years for boys and 86 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 Kelley has been given predominantly to girls, with 88.0% of all recorded births being female. In 2023, 54.8% of babies named Kelley were girls. Interestingly, until around 1956, the name was more popular for boys (80.2% boys from 1882 to 1955), but since then it has been more commonly used for girls (90.8% girls from 1956 to 2023).
For girls, Kelley reached its peak popularity in 1968, achieving the 77.9% percentile (ranked #166) with 1,122 births per million. The name was most common in 1968, with 1,122 births per million (ranked 77.9% percentile). Despite a low point in 2019, the name has seen a recent decline in popularity for girls. Currently, Kelley ranks #935 for girls (1.3% percentile) with 10 births per million, which is 0.9% of its peak share of births.
For boys, Kelley reached its peak popularity in 1968, achieving the 24.0% percentile (ranked #488) with 95 births per million. The name was most common in 1900, with 105 births per million (ranked 4.8% percentile). Since reaching a high point around 2021, the popularity of this name for boys has been declining. Currently, Kelley ranks #902 for boys (1.0% percentile) with 8 births per million, which is 7.3% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Kelley".
These names exclude other spelling variations of Kelly. View all variations of Kelly.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Kelley", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. This list excludes the 19 other name spellings that we've determined are also variations of "Kelly" based on shared pronunciations. Click here for more details on names that are pronounced like Kelly..
Our model found one way to pronounce the name Kelley. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 100.0% confident that Kelley is pronounced as KEH-lee, which has 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 Kelley? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Kelley. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Kelley, 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 EH1 L IY0) 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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