How popular is the baby name Kayla in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Use the popularity graph and data table below to find out! Plus, see all the blog posts that mention the name Kayla.
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Back in 1997, the western U.S. state of Colorado welcomed 56,505 babies.
What were the most popular names among these babies? Hannah and Jacob, according to data from the Health Statistics Section of Colorado’s Department of Public Health and Environment.
The state also revealed the top names within each of its three largest racial/ethnic groups, which it defined as “White/non-Hispanic,” “White/Hispanic,” and “Black.”
Number of babies
Top girl name
Top boy name
White/non-Hispanic
38,729 (69%)
Hannah
Jacob
White/Hispanic
12,951 (23%)
Jessica
Jose
Black
2,582 (5%)
Jasmine
Isaiah
Here are Colorado’s top 50 girl names (overall) and top 50 boy names (overall) of 1997:
Girl names
Hannah
Emily
Jessica
Sarah
Madison
Samantha
Taylor
Alexandra
Ashley
Megan
Elizabeth
Rachel
Alyssa
Alexis
Lauren
Emma
Kayla
Morgan
Amanda
Brianna
Jennifer
Jordan
Abigail
Victoria
Nicole
Brittany
Rebecca
Danielle
Katherine
Sierra
Anna
Mariah
Olivia
Amber
Sydney
Stephanie
Jasmine
Brooke
Haley
Maria
Kaitlyn
Gabrielle
Savannah
Allison
Marissa
Bailey
Courtney
Sara
Erin
Mackenzie
Boy names
Jacob
Michael
Matthew
Joshua
Austin
Tyler
Andrew
Christopher
Nicholas
Brandon
Daniel
Ryan
Joseph
Zachary
David
Alexander
Anthony
John
James
Benjamin
Kyle
Samuel
William
Justin
Jonathan
Dylan
Christian
Jordan
Cody
Robert
Nathan
Aaron
Thomas
Eric
Connor
Cameron
Jose
Noah
Adam
Logan
Isaiah
Sean
Gabriel
Caleb
Jack
Cole
Kevin
Trevor
Ethan
Ian
How do these rankings stack up against the U.S. Social Security Administration’s 1997 rankings for Colorado?
The boy names look similar, but there are two significant discrepancies among the girl names: Alexandra ranked 11 spots lower (19th vs. 8th) and Gabrielle ranked 33 spots lower (75th vs. 42nd) on the federal government’s list.
Other names bestowed in Colorado in 1997 included “Elway, Jamaica, and Mars for baby boys, and October, November, Paradise, and Rejoice for baby girls.”
Elway was no doubt inspired by John Elway, the longtime Denver Broncos quarterback who was about to lead the team to its first Super Bowl victory (in January of 1998).
Speaking of Colorado baby names with historical significance…here are posts about Denver (b. 1859), Colorado (b. 1859), Salida (b. 1881), and Silver Dollar (b. 1889).
Did you know that you can find old vital statistics reports for the City of Philadelphia on the city’s website? And that most of these reports include baby name rankings?
I don’t want you to have to comb through a bunch of PDFs to find Philly’s historical top-ten lists, though, so — just as with New York City and Austin — I gathered all of them into a single blog post.
I was able to track down eleven sets of rankings — six covering 2005 to 2010, five covering 2012 to 2016. Eight of them also happen to include total numbers of babies.
2016
The most popular baby names in Philadelphia in 2016.
Finally, because Philadelphia and New York City are relatively close to one another, I thought I’d compare/contrast the rankings above with the NYC rankings for the same years (2005 to 2016, excluding 2011).
Parents in both cities often liked the same names, but not always at the same time, or to the same degree. During the years that Kayla ranked #1 in Philly, for instance, it was already on the decline in NYC.
Here are all the names that reached the top 10 at least twice in one city, but zero times in the other city:
The song “Kayleigh” (1985) by British rock band Marillion.
Several of the band’s singles had done well in the UK up to that point, but the rock ballad “Kayleigh” was their first (and, so far, only) song to reach the U.S. Hot 100, peaking at #74 in late October, 1985.
The lead singer of the band had written the song with several past girlfriends in mind, but the name of the song was inspired by one woman in particular. He explained:
I’d wanted to write a song about a girlfriend I’d split up with, whose name was Kay. Which of course we couldn’t do. So we added her middle name, Lee, and it became Kayleigh instead. […] But it wasn’t just about Kay, it was inspired by three or four different people in my life.
Interestingly, the entire Kaylee name-group was already on the rise before the song was released in mid-1985. For instance, the most popular spelling of the name, Kaylee — which ultimately peaked at 26th in 2009 — jumped well into the top 1,000 (824th) in 1984. The same year, the spelling Kaylie was the 25th-fastest rising girl name (relatively speaking), and girl-name debuts included Caylie, Caleigh, Cayley, Kailie, and Cailey — not to mention Kayleigh itself.
So the song didn’t exactly kick things off. No doubt it contributed to the name’s trendiness, though. It does seem to have given a discernible boost to the spellings Kaleigh, Kalee, Kalie, Kaeleigh, and Kaileigh. And it may have been behind the debut of Cayleigh in 1986.
So…why was the Kaylee name-group already picking up stream in 1984? I don’t know for certain, but I can point to a couple of possible contributing factors:
The trendiness of Kayla in the early ’80s, due largely to a soap opera character: Kayla Brady from Days of Our Lives.
The trendiness of Ashley in the early ’80s, due in part to another soap opera character: Ashley Abbott from The Young and the Restless.
What are your thoughts on the baby name Kayleigh? (Do you like this spelling, or do you prefer one of the other spellings?)
P.S. Marillion’s 2nd-biggest song, “Lavender” (1985) — which was the track right after “Kayleigh” on the Misplaced Childhood album — may have given the baby name Lavender a nudge in the mid-’80s.
P.P.S. The band’s name, pronounced mar-IH-lee-un, was based on the title of the novel The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien.
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