Keshia
Feminine
Keshia is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 5,380 girls against 6 boys since 1880.
Keshia is the spelling that keeps both vowels. Keisha has an ei that English cannot read reliably; Kisha drops it entirely; Keshia keeps an e and an i and puts the sh between them, which is the only version of the three that shows every sound and every letter doing something.
How old is the name Keshia?
Keshia first appears in US birth records in 1964 — 61 years ago. The typical Keshia alive today was born around 1986, making them about 39 years old. About 5,200 people named Keshia are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Keshia most popular?
Keshia peaked in 1986, reaching #426 nationally. See the whole 1986 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
The story of Keshia
The interesting thing about this family of spellings is that they are not careless variants but competing solutions to a genuine problem: English has no stable way to write the sound in the middle. Keisha uses ei, which can be read two ways; Keesha uses ee, which is unambiguous but longer; Kisha uses a single i, which is short and can be misread; Keshia moves the sh forward and lets the i land after it. Each is a reasonable answer and none has become standard, which is why all four are still in use.
Meaningscholars disagree
Not established
Three roads. Keziah is a biblical name — a daughter of Job, from a Hebrew word for cassia, a spice bark — and it produced Kizzy and Keesha in African American families over several generations. The -isha ending, ultimately from Arabic Aisha, was independently productive in American naming. And the name may simply have been built. All three are plausible and none is documented for a particular family.
Pronouncing Keshia
KEE-shuh
KEE-shuh, two syllables, stress at the front. Some give it three, KESH-ee-uh, sounding the i separately, which the spelling genuinely permits — this is the one cost of keeping both vowels.
Nicknames for Keshia
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
- 1964
- Most girls named
- 1986511 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #426reached in 1986
- Change vs 2010
- +14.3%8 in 2011, from 7
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.
Keshia in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- קְצִיעָה in Hebrew — transliteration
Keshias among us
people named Keshia are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Keshia sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- Every letter in the spelling is doing something, which is not true of the alternatives.
- Shia and Kesh are both usable short forms and they sound quite different.
- It works for either child, which the record confirms.
- The syllable count is not settled by the spelling, so the name is said two ways.
- Keisha is the most common spelling of the sound and this will be rewritten as it.
- The name is closely tied to one American generation and dates a person fairly precisely.
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Keshia
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Keshias are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 5,200 people named Keshia are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Keshia in 2025?
- Keshia is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Keshia with classmates?
- Keshia will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More K names
The most-given names starting with K, all years combined.
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Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Keshia? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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