Kaisen
Masculine
Kaisen is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 2,625 boys against 12 girls since 1880.
Kaisen is a young name — one of the American coinages built on Kai, which has its own long standing as a name in Hawaiian, Frisian and Danish usage, finished with the -sen ending that English speakers already know from Mason, Grayson and Jensen. It is two syllables, stress on the first, and it lands cleanly in the mouth. It arrived in the US record only in the present century and has been growing rather than fading.
How old is the name Kaisen?
Kaisen first appears in US birth records in 2004 — 21 years ago. The typical Kaisen is a kid of about 5 — this name's wave is very recent. About 2,600 people named Kaisen are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Kaisen most popular?
Kaisen peaked in 2025, reaching #800 nationally. Today it ranks #800, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
Our story of Kaisen
Picture the pieces rather than a single source. Kai has been carried in Hawaii, in Frisian villages along the North Sea, and in Denmark, each tradition arriving at the same short sound by its own road. The -sen that follows is the old Scandinavian 'son of', the ending that filled American classrooms through Mason, Grayson and Jensen. Kaisen sits where those two familiar sounds meet — new enough that its first bearers are still children, strongest so far across Texas, Florida and North Carolina, and unmistakably part of the same wave without being a copy of anything in it.
Meaningnot established
Not established
Kaisen itself has no established meaning; it is a modern formation and nobody has documented who first put it together. What is documented is the material: Kai is a long-used given name, meaning 'sea' in Hawaiian and carrying separate unrelated roots in Frisian and Danish, and the -sen ending is the Scandinavian patronymic 'son of' familiar from surnames like Jensen and Hansen.
Pronouncing Kaisen
KY-sen
Two syllables, stress on the first, rhyming with the first part of 'Kaiser'. Some families say KAY-sen instead, since English reads the letters 'ai' both ways — worth deciding early and saying it the same way every time.
Nicknames for Kaisen
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
- 2004
- Most boys named
- 2025311 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #800reached in 2025
- Change vs 2024
- +19.2%311 in 2025, from 261
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.
Kaisen in other languages
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, Florida, North Carolina.
Kaisens among us
people named Kaisen are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 5,492 born in 2025 was named Kaisen
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Kaisen
- #800
- Kaisen on the 2025 chart
- #150
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Kaisen went to 311 boys in 2025, but Kaizen, Kaysen and Kaycen and the rest below are the same name said out loud. Together the 13 spellings went to 2,509, which makes it the 150th most-given boys’ name of the year — 650 places above the chart.
and 5 rarer spellings.
About 1 boy in 681 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 5,492 for Kaisen 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 Michale test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Kaisen's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Michale climbed just as high around 1954, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Michale's path sketches the road Kaisen is walking now.
Kaisen is climbing fast right now. Steep climbs tend to come with steep descents — the quicker a name arrives, the more firmly it belongs to its moment.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Kaisen is headed
Kaisen looks set to keep climbing gently, with roughly 15% more babies a year by 2030 if the current curve holds.
High confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Kaisen beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Kaisen in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Comes with Kai ready-made as a short form — a name with its own independent history, so the child has a simple fallback that needs no explaining.
- Two syllables with the stress up front, easy to call across a room and easy for a young child to say.
- Sits inside a sound pattern American adults already recognize from Mason, Grayson and Jensen, so it registers as a name on first hearing.
- Rare enough that a Kaisen is unlikely to share the name with anyone in the building, while the pattern behind it is completely familiar.
- The spelling doesn't fix the sound: 'ai' can be read KY or KAY in English, so expect to correct people on the vowel for years, not just the spelling.
- Close neighbors already exist — Kaysen, Kayson, Kaison — and people will default to whichever one they've seen. Assume it gets written back to you the wrong way fairly often.
- There is no documented meaning or old lineage to hand over when someone asks where it comes from. That may not matter to you, but it's worth knowing before the question arrives.
- Its whole record is recent, so it reads clearly as a name of this era and will likely mark a generation the way Jason or Dylan do.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Kaisen
Masculine · #800 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Kaisens are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 2,600 people named Kaisen are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Kaisen?
- Kaisen is one of 8 recorded spellings. Kaizen is the more common one — 895 births in 2025 against 311 for Kaisen.
- How popular is the name Kaisen in 2025?
- Kaisen ranks #800 among US boy names in 2025, with 311 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Kaisen?
- About 1 in every 5,492 US boys born in 2025 was named Kaisen — 311 in all.
- Will my child share the name Kaisen with classmates?
- Kaisen will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Kaisen
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Raylan#800 · Zeke#800 · Keith#800 · Calum#799 · Crue#797 · Thaddeus#797 · Everest#796 · Brewer#804
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Kaisen? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Kaisen and another name?
See them side by side — full stats, history and a gentle verdict.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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