Kinsley
Feminine
Kinsley is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 50,016 girls against 227 boys since 1880.
Kinsley began as a place in West Yorkshire — a village written down as Chineslai in the Domesday survey of 1086 — and traveled the long way round: from field to village to family surname to first name. The sound is already familiar to English ears, sharing its second half with the whole -ley family of meadow names. Said aloud it lands in two even beats, with the soft z in the middle doing most of the work.
How old is the name Kinsley?
Kinsley first appears in US birth records in 1978 — 47 years ago. The typical Kinsley is a kid of about 7 — this name's wave is very recent. About 49,500 people named Kinsley are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Kinsley most popular?
Kinsley peaked in 2021, reaching #57 nationally. Today it ranks #93, 36 places below that high. See the whole 2021 chart.
Where it comes from
From leah (Old English: clearing, meadow) to Kinsley
The story of Kinsley
The name is a English place name first, a surname second, and a given name only lately. Kinsley village in West Yorkshire appears in the Domesday Book of 1086, and families who came from there carried the name away with them as a surname. Surnames of that kind crossed to North America and sat quietly in family trees for generations before American parents began moving them to the front of the name, a habit that has also given us Ashley, Riley and Hadley. Kinsley is one of the more recent arrivals in that pattern, and in US records it is given to girls.
Meaningscholars disagree
'King's clearing' or 'Cyne's clearing' — a meadow name from Old English
The second element is not in doubt: Old English leah, a woodland clearing or meadow, which ends dozens of English place names. The first is read two ways — either cyning, 'king', or the Old English personal name element Cyne-, in which case the clearing belonged to a particular man rather than a crown.
How the name formed
- leahOld English: clearing, meadow
- ChineslaiDomesday Book, 1086
- KinsleyEnglish place name
- Kinsleysurname
- Kinsleygiven name
Pronouncing Kinsley
KINZ-lee
Stress on the first syllable. The s is pronounced as a z, the same way it falls in Lindsey and Ramsey. There is no competing pronunciation to explain.
Nicknames for Kinsley
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
- 1978
- Most girls named
- 20174,053 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #57reached in 2021
- Change vs 2024
- −9.1%2,671 in 2025, from 2,937
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.
Kinsley in other languages
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, Florida.
Kinsleys among us
people named Kinsley are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 602 born in 2025 was named Kinsley
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 Kristina test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Kinsley's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Kristina climbed just as high around 1985, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Kristina's path sketches the road Kinsley is walking now.
Kinsley is coming down from a big peak (#57 in 2021). This is the stretch of the cycle where a name starts to sound like the decade it ruled.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Kinsley is headed
Kinsley 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.
Kinsley beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Kinsley in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Spells the way it sounds for most English speakers, and reads at a glance because the -ley ending is already everywhere in English names.
- Sits in a long-documented line: the leah element behind it has been naming English meadows since before the Norman Conquest.
- Two clean syllables with first-syllable stress, which pairs easily with both short and long surnames.
- Rare enough in any one school that a child is unlikely to share it with a classmate, while still being a name people recognize immediately.
- Rival spellings circulate — Kinslee, Kinsleigh, Kinzley — so expect to spell it aloud even though yours is the plainest version.
- Its whole run as a given name is recent, so it currently reads as a name of children rather than of adults, and there are few grown Kinsleys to borrow the effect from.
- It can be misheard as Kinsey or Kimberly over the phone, which usually costs nothing more than a second attempt.
- Outside the English-speaking world the name has no equivalent forms, so it stays foreign-sounding abroad rather than translating.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Kinsley
Feminine · #93 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Kinsleys are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 49,500 people named Kinsley are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Kinsley in 2025?
- Kinsley ranks #93 among US girl names in 2025, with 2,671 babies given the name.
- How common is the name Kinsley?
- About 1 in every 602 US girls born in 2025 was named Kinsley — 2,671 in all.
- Will my child share the name Kinsley with classmates?
- Kinsley will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Kinsley
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Sienna#94 · Lydia#92 · Jade#95 · Everly#91 · Caroline#96 · Sarah#90 · Quinn#97 · Natalie#89
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Kinsley? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Kinsley and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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