Kaleo
Masculine · “the voice”
Kaleo is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 2,252 boys against 5 girls since 1880.
In Hawaiian, Kaleo is a small complete phrase: ka, the definite article, and leo, voice or sound — "the voice." It is built exactly the way Kalani and Kailani are built, an article fused to a noun, and it moves through the mouth in three open syllables with nothing hard in it. An Icelandic rock band chose the same Hawaiian word for its name, which is how a good many people outside the islands first met it in print.
How old is the name Kaleo?
Kaleo first appears in US birth records in 1971 — 54 years ago. The typical Kaleo is a kid of about 7 — this name's wave is very recent. About 2,200 people named Kaleo are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Kaleo most popular?
Kaleo peaked in 2025, reaching #897 nationally. Today it ranks #897, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Kaleo appears on this list:
Where it comes from
From leo (Hawaiian: voice, sound) to Kaleo
The story of Kaleo
Kaleo comes straight out of the Hawaiian language, where ka is the definite article and leo means voice or sound — the sort of transparent construction that Hawaiian given names often use, as in Kalani, "the heavens." Traditional Hawaiian naming practice (inoa) drew names from dreams, signs, events and ancestors rather than from a fixed stock of first names, so a phrase like ka leo could become a name in a particular family for a particular reason. The Hawaiian cultural renaissance of the later twentieth century brought a broad return to Hawaiian-language names, and Kaleo traveled with Hawaiian families to the mainland from there. It remains a genuinely Hawaiian word, still spoken in ordinary sentences, not only a name.
Meaning
the voice, the sound (Hawaiian)
From Hawaiian ka (the) + leo (voice, sound, tone, command).
How the name formed
- leoHawaiian: voice, sound
- ka leothe voice
- Kaleo
Pronouncing Kaleo
kah-LAY-oh
Hawaiian vowels are steady: a as in father, e as in they, o as in go, and every one is sounded. Stress falls on the middle syllable. The common mainland slip is kah-LEE-oh.
Nicknames for Kaleo
High
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
- 1971
- Most boys named
- 2025265 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #897reached in 2025
- Change vs 2024
- +35.2%265 in 2025, from 196
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.
Kaleo in other languages
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida.
Kaleos among us
people named Kaleo are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 6,446 born in 2025 was named Kaleo
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Michal test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Kaleo's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Michal climbed just as high around 1956, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Michal's path sketches the road Kaleo is walking now.
Kaleo 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 Kaleo is headed
Kaleo looks set to keep climbing gently, with roughly 26% more babies a year by 2030 if the current curve holds.
Medium 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.
Kaleo beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Kaleo in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The meaning is exact and easy to say in one breath — ka, "the," plus leo, "voice" — in a language still spoken today.
- Spelled just as it sounds once the Hawaiian vowel values are known; no silent letters, no competing spellings.
- Two ready-made short forms, Kal and Leo, both of which already work as standalone names in English.
- Short and vowel-heavy, so it sits easily beside surnames of almost any length or consonant weight.
- Expect to correct the pronunciation regularly outside Hawaii and Hawaiian communities: kah-LEE-oh is the usual guess. A one-line fix, but a lifelong one.
- It is a word from a living Indigenous language, and some families feel a name like this should come with a real connection to Hawaii or to Hawaiian relatives. Worth thinking through in advance rather than at a first-day-of-school introduction.
- Hawaiian names generally do not carry grammatical gender, and while US records show Kaleo overwhelmingly for boys, it can be given to girls — so a form may occasionally be filled in the other way.
- By ear it can land near Kaleb or Caleb, and the nickname Leo is common enough that he may end up sharing it with a classmate.
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What they receive
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Kaleo
Masculine · #897 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Kaleos 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 Kaleo are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Kaleo in 2025?
- Kaleo ranks #897 among US boy names in 2025, with 265 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Kaleo?
- About 1 in every 6,446 US boys born in 2025 was named Kaleo — 265 in all.
- Will my child share the name Kaleo with classmates?
- Kaleo will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Kaleo
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Lucien#897 · Marcello#897 · Alistair#897 · Eliezer#893 · Hollis#893 · Guillermo#901 · Laith#893 · Ishaan#893
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Kaleo? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Kaleo and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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