Khalil
Masculine · Arabic roots · “friend”
Khalil is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 25,021 boys against 182 girls since 1880.
Khalil comes from Arabic and means friend — not an acquaintance but the close kind, the companion. In Islamic tradition Abraham carries the title Khalīl Allāh, friend of God, which has kept the name in steady use across the Arabic-speaking world for centuries. It reached American bookshelves through the Lebanese poet Gibran Khalil Gibran, whose middle name a Boston school reshuffled into the Kahlil that appears on The Prophet.
How old is the name Khalil?
Khalil first appears in US birth records in 1957 — 68 years ago. The typical Khalil alive today was born around 2012, making them about 13 years old. About 24,500 people named Khalil are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Khalil most popular?
Khalil peaked in 1995, reaching #251 nationally. Today it ranks #384, 133 places below that high. See the whole 1995 chart.
Khalil appears on this list:
Works in Arabic families too:
Where it comes from
From khalīl (Arabic) to Khalil
The story of Khalil
The name is Arabic, built on a root that describes intimate friendship rather than mere acquaintance, and it became a fixture of Muslim naming largely through Abraham's title Khalīl Allāh. From Arabic it traveled with Islam into Turkish as Halil, into Persian and Urdu, and into the Balkans, where Bosnian families have used Halil for generations. It arrived in the United States along two roads: with Arab immigration from Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, and separately through Black American families from the mid-twentieth century onward. Gibran published The Prophet in New York in 1923 under the misspelled Kahlil, and that spelling has been on English-language shelves ever since.
Meaning
friend, close companion
From the Arabic root kh-l-l. The same root gives khullah, deep friendship. The epithet Khalīl Allāh, friend of God, is applied to Abraham.
How the name formed
- khalīlArabic
- Khalīl Allāh
- HalilTurkish
- Khalil
Related forms: خليل (Khalīl) · Halil · Halil · خلیل (Khalil) · Kahlil · Khaleel
Pronouncing Khalil
kah-LEEL
Stress falls on the second syllable. In Arabic the opening kh is a throaty fricative, closer to the ch in Bach; in American English it is almost always simplified to a plain k, and both are accepted without fuss.
Nicknames for Khalil
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
- 1957
- Most boys named
- 20201,233 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #251reached in 1995
- Change vs 2024
- −0.6%826 in 2025, from 831
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.
Khalil in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- خليل (Khalīl) in Arabic — same name
- Halil in Turkish — related form
- Halil in Bosnian — related form
- خلیل (Khalil) in Urdu — transliteration
- Kahlil in English — spelling variant
- Khaleel in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, Florida, California.
Khalils among us
people named Khalil are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 2,068 born in 2025 was named Khalil
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 Harlan test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Khalil's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Harlan climbed just as high around 1924, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Harlan's path sketches the road Khalil is walking now.
Khalil 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
Where Khalil is headed
Khalil should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
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.
Khalil beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Khalil in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Works across Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Urdu and Bosnian-speaking communities, so it travels without translation.
- Reads phonetically for most English speakers on the first try, with stress on the second syllable.
- Has been on American records continuously for decades, familiar to teachers and clerks without ever being commonplace.
- A meaning that is settled and needs no explaining: friend.
- Three spellings circulate in English — Khalil, Kahlil and Khaleel — and Gibran's book has made Kahlil the one many Americans picture first. Expect to spell it aloud fairly often.
- The Arabic kh will usually come out as a plain K in an American mouth. Some families make peace with that; others correct it for life.
- Short forms are thin on the ground. Khalil tends to be used in full, which suits some households and frustrates others.
- Its link to Abraham's title gives it religious weight in Muslim and Christian traditions alike — worth knowing, whether or not that is part of why it appeals.
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What they receive
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Khalil
Masculine · Arabic roots · #384 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Khalils are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 24,500 people named Khalil are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Khalil in 2025?
- Khalil ranks #384 among US boy names in 2025, with 826 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Khalil?
- About 1 in every 2,068 US boys born in 2025 was named Khalil — 826 in all.
- Will my child share the name Khalil with classmates?
- Khalil will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Khalil
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Cesar#385 · Stephen#383 · Baylor#386 · Winston#381 · Fernando#387 · Lawson#381 · Ricardo#380 · Elio#388
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Khalil? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Khalil and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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