Calleigh
Feminine
Calleigh has something almost no name has: a first air date. It was written for a character in CSI: Miami, which premiered in September 2002, and American records show the name essentially absent before that and climbing for a decade afterward.
How old is the name Calleigh?
Calleigh first appears in US birth records in 1991 — 34 years ago. The typical Calleigh alive today was born around 2010, making them about 15 years old. About 2,200 people named Calleigh are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Calleigh most popular?
Calleigh peaked in 2009, reaching #834 nationally. Today it ranks #6325, 5,491 places below that high. See the whole 2009 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
Our story of Calleigh
Names normally arrive without a birthday. Calleigh has one, more or less: the character Calleigh Duquesne, a Louisiana ballistics specialist, appeared on American screens in the autumn of 2002 and stayed there for ten seasons. Look at the numbers and the shape is unmistakable, a flat line before 2002, a climb through the middle of the decade, and a best year in 2009, deep into the show's run rather than at its start. That lag is what a genuinely television-driven name looks like: the first season creates recognition, and it takes several more years for recognition to turn into a naming decision. The -eigh spelling was already in circulation when the writers chose it, which is why the name felt plausible to viewers immediately and why the spelling survived contact with the real world.
Meaningnot established
Not established
Calleigh was constructed for a television character and has no inherited etymology. The pieces are recognizable: Cal- as in Callie and Calla, and the -eigh ending taken from Leigh and Haleigh. Glosses connecting it to Greek kallos, beauty, or to Irish ceallach are retrofits applied to the spelling after the fact, not sources the writers drew on.
Pronouncing Calleigh
KAL-ee
Two syllables, stress on the first, with the short a of cat. The -eigh is a single -ee sound; it never rhymes with sleigh here despite the spelling.
Nicknames for Calleigh
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
- 1991
- Most girls named
- 2009335 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #834reached in 2009
- Change vs 2024
- −28.0%18 in 2025, from 25
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.
Calleigh in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Callie in English — related form
- Kaleigh in English — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, Florida, Ohio.
Calleighs among us
people named Calleigh are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 89,293 born in 2025 was named Calleigh
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Calleigh
- #6325
- Calleigh on the 2025 chart
- #832
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Calleigh went to 18 girls in 2025, but Kaleigh, Caleigh and Kalleigh are the same name said out loud. Together the 4 spellings went to 128, which makes it the 832nd most-given girls’ name of the year — 5,493 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 12,557 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 89,293 for Calleigh 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 Larry test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Calleigh's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Larry climbed just as high around 1940, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Larry's path sketches the road Calleigh is walking now.
Calleigh 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
Calleigh beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Calleigh in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Sounds like the well-established Callie, so it is understood immediately.
- Cal and Callie are both ready, and they sit in very different registers.
- A documented origin with a date, which almost no invented name can claim.
- The -eigh spelling reliably produces kuh-LAY on a first reading.
- Callie, Caleigh, Kaleigh and Kayleigh all share the sound.
- The television association is strong for anyone who watched the show.
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Calleigh
Feminine · #6325 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Calleighs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 2,200 people named Calleigh are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Calleigh?
- Calleigh is one of 4 recorded spellings. Kaleigh is the more common one — 56 births in 2025 against 18 for Calleigh.
- How popular is the name Calleigh in 2025?
- Calleigh ranks #6325 among US girl names in 2025, with 18 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Calleigh?
- About 1 in every 89,293 US girls born in 2025 was named Calleigh — 18 in all.
- Will my child share the name Calleigh with classmates?
- Calleigh will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Calleigh
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Kaye#6325 · Doria#6325 · Karolyn#6325 · Rosaleen#6325 · Roni#6325 · Darian#6325 · Svetlana#6325 · Fanny#6325
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Calleigh? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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