Kelly

499,222 people in America carry this name — ranked #85 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it KEH lee

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

K EH1 L IY0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 499,222 2020 Census
  • As a surname 255,516 ranked #80 the other way round

What Kelly means and where it comes from

Reads literally as “a grove, generally of hazel”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

How often Kelly has been given

554,190 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1968, with 20,198 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50 60s 70 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1960s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

What goes well after Kelly

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Kelly Karen — same opening
  • Kelly Kathleen — same opening
  • Kelly Katherine — same opening

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

Going quiet

Kelly has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to Generation X.

Is Kelly a boy's or a girl's name?

12.4% men
437,520 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

How Kelly is spelled

Kelly is how 78% of them spell it — 637,967 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

The likeliest full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Names built the same way as Kelly

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

Where the name Kelly is most common in the US

In Wyoming the name is given 1.6 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Wyoming ×1.6
  • North Dakota ×1.6
  • Montana ×1.5
  • Vermont ×1.5
  • Wisconsin ×1.5

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

Try it Adult Height

Open Adult Height on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers