girls:
149.6k births since 1942
#264 (95th percentile)
boys:
5.3k births since 1891
#1643 (64th percentile)
overall:
154.9k births since 1891
#488 (94th percentile)
The name Kelsey is the #488 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 154,939 recorded births since 1891. This represents the 93.7% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 93.7% of all names). For girls, it ranks #264 (95.4% percentile) for all time with 149,638 births since 1942. For boys, it ranks #1,643 (64.2% percentile) for all time with 5,301 births since 1891.
Kelsey first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1891 (1891 for boys and 1942 for girls). Birth data for Kelsey is available in 114 out of the 133 years between 1891 and 2023 (114 years for boys and 80 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 Kelsey has been given almost exclusively to girls, with 96.6% of all recorded births being female. Interestingly, until around 1975, the name was more popular for boys (61.7% boys from 1891 to 1974), but since then it has been more commonly used for girls (97.3% girls from 1975 to 2023).
For girls, Kelsey reached its peak popularity in 1992, achieving the 97.4% percentile (ranked #23) with 5,843 births per million. The name was most common in 1992, with 5,843 births per million (ranked 97.4% percentile). Since reaching a high point in 1994, the popularity of this name for girls has been declining. Currently, Kelsey ranks #546 for girls (42.4% percentile) with 253 births per million, which is 4.3% of its peak share of births.
For boys, Kelsey reached its peak popularity in 1989, achieving the 30.4% percentile (ranked #527) with 119 births per million. The name was most common in 1989, with 119 births per million (ranked 30.4% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2020, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Kelsey ranks #905 for boys (0.7% percentile) with 6 births per million, which is 5.0% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Kelsey".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Kelsey.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Kelsey", 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 Kelsey.
Our model found one way to pronounce the name Kelsey. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 100.0% confident that Kelsey is pronounced as KEHL-see, which has 2 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 EH1 L S 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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