girls:
3.8k births since 1917
#2790 (51st percentile)
boys:
14.4k births since 1881
#971 (79th percentile)
overall:
18.3k births since 1881
#1901 (75th percentile)
The name Kirby is the #1,901 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 18,272 recorded births since 1881. This represents the 75.4% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 75.4% of all names). For boys, it ranks #971 (78.8% percentile) for all time with 14,444 births since 1881. For girls, it ranks #2,790 (51.2% percentile) for all time with 3,828 births since 1917.
Kirby first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1881 (1881 for boys and 1917 for girls). Birth data for Kirby is available in 141 out of the 143 years between 1881 and 2023 (141 years for boys and 88 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 Kirby has been given predominantly to boys, with 79.0% of all recorded births being male. In 2023, 46.1% of babies named Kirby were boys.
For boys, Kirby reached its peak popularity in 1957, achieving the 42.3% percentile (ranked #380) with 164 births per million. The name was most common in 1957, with 164 births per million (ranked 42.3% percentile). Since reaching a high point around 2020, the popularity of this name for boys has been declining. Currently, Kirby ranks #869 for boys (4.6% percentile) with 26 births per million, which is 15.7% of its peak share of births.
For girls, Kirby reached its peak popularity in 1984, achieving the 41.8% percentile (ranked #459) with 204 births per million. The name was most common in 1984, with 204 births per million (ranked 41.8% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2008, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Kirby ranks #897 for girls (5.3% percentile) with 31 births per million, which is 15.5% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Kirby".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Kirby.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Kirby", 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 Kirby.
Our model has identified 2 different pronunciations for the name Kirby. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 89.5% confident that Kirby is pronounced as KER-bee, which has 2 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is ker-bee, at 10.5% 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 Kirby? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Kirby. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Kirby, 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 ER1 B 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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