Kylee
Feminine · Scottish Gaelic roots
Kylee is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 50,337 girls against 498 boys since 1880.
Kylee belongs to a small cluster of names that arrived in English from two directions at once — a Scottish place-word and an Australian one — and settled into a sound Americans took to immediately. The spelling with the double e follows a pattern English speakers already know from Bailee, Hailee and Ashlee. Two beats, both light, and no one has to ask how to say it.
How old is the name Kylee?
Kylee first appears in US birth records in 1965 — 60 years ago. The typical Kylee alive today was born around 2006, making them about 19 years old. About 50,000 people named Kylee are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Kylee most popular?
Kylee peaked in 2011, reaching #138 nationally. Today it ranks #875, 737 places below that high. See the whole 2011 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Caol (Scottish Gaelic, 'narrow') to Kylee
The story of Kylee
The parent form, Kylie, came into common use in Australia and spread through the English-speaking world in the second half of the twentieth century, carried especially by Australian pop music in the 1980s. American parents took the sound and reshaped the ending, and Kylee is that reshaping — the same name written the way -ee names like Ashlee and Bailee were being written at the time. It arrived on US records in the mid-1960s, well before its busiest stretch, then climbed steadily for decades. Its strongest footing has been in Texas, Florida and Georgia.
Meaningscholars disagree
Either 'boomerang' or 'narrow strait' — the sources disagree
Two readings compete, and both are real. Kylie is an attested Australian English word for a returning boomerang, borrowed from Nyungar, a language of southwestern Australia. Separately, English speakers have long treated Kylie as a feminine partner to Kyle, which comes through the Ayrshire place-name from Scottish Gaelic caol, 'narrow' or 'strait'. Neither explanation cancels the other; the name reached wide use in the twentieth century with both attached to it.
How the name formed
- CaolScottish Gaelic, 'narrow'
- Kyle
- Kylie
- Kylee
Related forms: Kylie · Kyleigh · Kiley · Kylah
Pronouncing Kylee
KY-lee
Stress on the first syllable, which rhymes with 'sky'. There is only one way to say it, whichever of the four spellings is written.
Nicknames for Kylee
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
- 1965
- Most girls named
- 20082,385 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #138reached in 2011
- Change vs 2024
- −8.4%306 in 2025, from 334
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.
Kylee in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Kylie in English (Australian) — spelling variant
- Kyleigh in English — spelling variant
- Kiley in English — spelling variant
- Kylah in English — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, Florida, Georgia.
Kylees among us
people named Kylee are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 5,253 born in 2025 was named Kylee
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Kylee
- #875
- Kylee on the 2025 chart
- #636
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Kylee went to 306 girls in 2025, but Khylee and Kyle are the same name said out loud. Together the 3 spellings went to 345, which makes it the 636th most-given girls’ name of the year — 239 places above the chart.
About 1 girl in 4,659 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 5,253 for Kylee 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 Erma test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Kylee's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Erma climbed just as high around 1911, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Erma's path sketches the road Kylee is walking now.
Kylee 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 Kylee is headed
Kylee is easing off slowly — about 22% fewer babies a year by 2030 if the trend continues.
High 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.
Kylee beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Kylee in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Reads correctly on sight for English speakers — the pronunciation has never been in question, only the spelling.
- Two syllables, easy to call across a yard and easy for a young child to write.
- Sits in a large, familiar sound family, so the name is never strange to an ear even when the spelling is new.
- Comes with a ready short form in Ky, which also stands alone as a given name.
- Carries two documented word-histories, one Scottish and one Australian — an unusually rich background for a modern spelling.
- Kylee, Kylie, Kyleigh and Kiley all sound identical, so she will spell it out often — at the doctor's office, on coffee cups, for teachers in September. Most people with -ee names simply learn to say the letters early.
- It is also close enough to Kaylee and Kailey to be misheard in a noisy room, and the two names get swapped in class lists.
- The name has a clear era. Most people carrying it now are teenagers and young adults, so it reads as recent rather than inherited — and it is stepping back from its busiest years, which means a child today is unlikely to share it with anyone in her grade.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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Kylee
Feminine · Scottish Gaelic roots · #875 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Kylees are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 50,000 people named Kylee are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Kylee?
- Kylee is the most-used spelling in US records — 306 of the 345 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Khylee and Kyle.
- How popular is the name Kylee in 2025?
- Kylee ranks #875 among US girl names in 2025, with 306 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Kylee?
- About 1 in every 5,253 US girls born in 2025 was named Kylee — 306 in all.
- Will my child share the name Kylee with classmates?
- Kylee will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Kylee
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Kahlani#875 · Lyanna#877 · Adrianna#872 · Tiffany#878 · Siya#878 · Marianna#872 · Giovanna#878 · Julie#872
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Kylee? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Kylee and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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