Kalee
Feminine · “Sanskrit kali”
Kalee is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 3,883 girls against 74 boys since 1880.
Calcutta is named after Kali. The village of Kalikata, the field or the steps of Kali, gave the city its name, and the goddess's temple at Kalighat is still there.
How old is the name Kalee?
Kalee first appears in US birth records in 1962 — 63 years ago. The typical Kalee alive today was born around 1998, making them about 27 years old. About 3,800 people named Kalee are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Kalee most popular?
Kalee peaked in 1993, reaching #1034 nationally. Today it ranks #10917, 9,883 places below that high. See the whole 1993 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Kali to Kalee
The story of Kalee
Kali's name is the feminine of kala, which carries two senses at once, black and time, and both are theologically live: she is the dark one and she is time, which devours everything. Her worship is concentrated in Bengal, and the Kalighat temple on the Hooghly gave its name to the settlement that the East India Company built into Calcutta, now Kolkata. She is not a simple figure of destruction in the tradition, and the standing image of her as such is largely a colonial and cinematic invention. The American Kalee is almost certainly not connected to any of this: it belongs to the Callie and Kaylee family, which is why the honest thing is to say so and let the goddess stand on her own.
Meaningscholars disagree
Sanskrit kali, the black one
Kalee resembles the Sanskrit Kali, the feminine of kala, meaning both black and time, the name of a major Hindu goddess. As an American name it is more plausibly a respelling of Callie or Kayleigh. The two are unrelated; the peak is 1993.
How the name formed
- Kali
- Kalee
Related forms: Callie · Kali
Pronouncing Kalee
KAL-ee
Two syllables, stress on the first. Some say KAY-lee, following Kaylee; both readings occur for this spelling.
Nicknames for Kalee
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
- 1962
- Most girls named
- 1999189 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1034reached in 1993
- Change vs 2024
- −42.9%8 in 2025, from 14
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.
Kalee in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Callie in English — related form
- Kali in Sanskrit — related form
Kalees among us
people named Kalee are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 200,908 born in 2025 was named Kalee
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Kalee
- #10917
- Kalee on the 2025 chart
- #939
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Kalee went to 8 girls in 2025, but Callee and Kallee are the same name said out loud. Together the 3 spellings went to 21, which makes it the 939th most-given girls’ name of the year — 9,978 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 76,537 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 200,908 for Kalee 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 Tequila test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Kalee's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Tequila climbed just as high around 1977, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Tequila's path sketches the road Kalee is walking now.
Kalee 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
Kalee beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Kalee in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Two syllables and five letters.
- Kal and Lee are two short forms.
- It is uncommon while sounding entirely familiar.
- Two pronunciations of the first vowel are in use.
- It shares a spelling with a major Hindu goddess.
- The 1993 peak dates it closely.
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What they receive
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Kalee
Feminine · #10917 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Kalees are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 3,800 people named Kalee are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Kalee?
- Kalee is the most-used spelling in US records — 8 of the 21 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Callee and Kallee.
- How popular is the name Kalee in 2025?
- Kalee ranks #10917 among US girl names in 2025, with 8 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Kalee?
- About 1 in every 200,908 US girls born in 2025 was named Kalee — 8 in all.
- Will my child share the name Kalee with classmates?
- Kalee will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Kalee
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Edythe#10917 · Tessie#10917 · Drusilla#10917 · Eugenie#10917 · Ivah#10917 · Karri#10917 · Claribel#10917 · Myrtle#10917
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Kalee? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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