Caileigh
Feminine
Kayleigh has a birthday. Marillion released the single in 1985, it reached number two in Britain, and the name went from nowhere to the British top twenty within two years. Few coinages have a cause that specific and that well documented.
How old is the name Caileigh?
Caileigh first appears in US birth records in 1988 — 37 years ago. The typical Caileigh alive today was born around 2008, making them about 17 years old. About 1,200 people named Caileigh are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Caileigh most popular?
Caileigh peaked in 2001, reaching #2844 nationally. Today it ranks #9457, 6,613 places below that high. See the whole 2001 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Kayleigh to Caileigh
The story of Caileigh
Marillion's single Kayleigh was released in April 1985 and reached number two in the British charts. The name was effectively unused before it. British registrations rise sharply from 1985, put Kayleigh in the top twenty by the late 1980s, and it stayed there for a decade before declining, a textbook single-cause curve. Fish, who wrote the lyric, has explained that he assembled the name from Kay and Lee, the first and middle names of a former partner, and chose the spelling to avoid using her name directly. The Scottish Gaelic ceilidh, a social gathering with music, is a different word entirely and is said KAY-lee, which is why the two are so often confused. The American curve is later and lower and arrives through the sound rather than the song.
Meaningnot established
Not established
Caileigh is one of many spellings of Kayleigh, a name with no inherited etymology. The songwriter has said he built it from the first names of a former girlfriend, Kay and Lee. The Gaelic derivations offered in name books, usually from ceilidh, a gathering, are later rationalisations. The American peak of this spelling is 2001.
How the name formed
- Kayleigh
- Caileigh
Related forms: Kayleigh · Kaylee
Pronouncing Caileigh
KAY-lee
Two syllables, stress on the first. Caileigh, Kayleigh, Kaylee and Kaleigh are homophones with at least a dozen spellings between them.
Nicknames for Caileigh
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1988
- Most girls named
- 200862 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2844reached in 2001
- Change vs 2024
- −23.1%10 in 2025, from 13
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Caileigh in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Kayleigh in English — spelling variant
- Kaylee in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: New York.
Caileighs among us
people named Caileigh are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 160,727 born in 2025 was named Caileigh
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Caileigh
- #9457
- Caileigh on the 2025 chart
- #588
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Caileigh went to 10 girls in 2025, but Kayleigh, Cayleigh and Kaileigh are the same name said out loud. Together the 4 spellings went to 402, which makes it the 588th most-given girls’ name of the year — 8,869 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 3,998 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 160,727 for Caileigh itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Yolunda test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Caileigh's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Yolunda climbed just as high around 1969, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Yolunda's path sketches the road Caileigh is walking now.
Caileigh sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Caileigh beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Caileigh in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Leigh is available as a short form and is a name in its own right.
- The sound is completely familiar.
- Its origin is datable to a single record and year.
- More than a dozen spellings compete for the same sound.
- It will be spelled out every time it is given.
- The Gaelic derivations offered for it are not supported.
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What they receive
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Caileigh
Feminine · #9457 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Caileighs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,200 people named Caileigh are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Caileigh?
- Caileigh is one of 4 recorded spellings. Kayleigh is the more common one — 340 births in 2025 against 10 for Caileigh.
- How popular is the name Caileigh in 2025?
- Caileigh ranks #9457 among US girl names in 2025, with 10 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Caileigh?
- About 1 in every 160,727 US girls born in 2025 was named Caileigh — 10 in all.
- Will my child share the name Caileigh with classmates?
- Caileigh will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Caileigh
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Leta#9457 · Inga#9457 · Delphia#9457 · Cammie#9457 · Lisandra#9457 · Amee#9457 · Venecia#9457 · Annetta#9457
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Caileigh? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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