Boy Names That Start With K
Boys' names beginning with K, ranked by how many babies actually got them — not by editorial preference — plus which ones are climbing and how the letter itself has moved.
- Share of boys, 2025
- 5.1%
- vs 3.9% in 2000
- Names in use
- 1,329
- 3,727 recorded since 1880
- Letter peaked
- 2020
- at 5.5% of names
- Rank among 26 letters
- #7
- by 2025 share
How K has fared since 1880
Share of all listed U.S. births given a name starting with K, year by year. Plotted as a share rather than a count — raw counts track how many babies were born, so every letter would appear to peak in 1957.
| Save name | Name & meaning | History 1926–2025, yearly counts; individually scaled | Babies 2025 · rank | 5-year rank movement | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,148#294 | Down 51 rank positions in five years | 1957 | |||
| 1,628#221 | Down 64 rank positions in five years | 1963 | |||
| 594#509 | Down 196 rank positions in five years | 1990 | |||
| 1,143#295 | Down 64 rank positions in five years | 2007 | |||
| 2,678#135 | Down 36 rank positions in five years | 2014 | |||
| 3,768#93 | Steady | 2022 | |||
| 1,034#328 | Down 75 rank positions in five years | 2006 | |||
| 1,476#237 | Down 98 rank positions in five years | 2014 | |||
| 1,725#204 | Down 86 rank positions in five years | 2021 | |||
| 663#466 | Down 166 rank positions in five years | 2015 | |||
| 790#404 | Down 160 rank positions in five years | 2019 | |||
| 449#621 | Down 125 rank positions in five years | 2007 | |||
| 786#405 | Down 234 rank positions in five years | 2017 | |||
| 559#535 | Down 110 rank positions in five years | 2013 | |||
| 1,265#270 | Down 108 rank positions in five years | 2019 | |||
| 826#384 | Down 110 rank positions in five years | 2020 | |||
| 1,836#196 | Up 42 rank positions in five years | 2022 | |||
| 943#349 | Up 14 rank positions in five years | 2024 | |||
| 578#519 | Down 280 rank positions in five years | 2001 | |||
| 690#453 | Down 187 rank positions in five years | 2018 | |||
| 695#451 | Down 114 rank positions in five years | 2018 | |||
| 1,416#244 | Down 20 rank positions in five years | 2017 | |||
| 817#389 | Up 125 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 1,183#286 | Down 31 rank positions in five years | 2021 | |||
| 489#594 | Down 151 rank positions in five years | 2012 | |||
| 770#418 | Down 66 rank positions in five years | 2017 | |||
| 1,305#264 | Up 30 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 480#597 | Down 231 rank positions in five years | 2019 | |||
| 797#401 | Up 50 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 811#391 | Down 7 rank positions in five years | 2022 | |||
| 622#484 | Down 8 rank positions in five years | 2019 | |||
| 1,577#226 | Up 54 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 507#579 | Down 54 rank positions in five years | 2022 | |||
| 648#471 | Down 10 rank positions in five years | 2023 | |||
| 1,143#296 | Up 345 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 1,281#269 | Up 313 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 797#400 | Up 42 rank positions in five years | 2022 | |||
| 557#540 | Down 86 rank positions in five years | 2020 | |||
| 778#411 | Up 178 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 772#415 | Up 147 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 797#402 | Up 47 rank positions in five years | 2024 | |||
| 448#623 | Up 568 rank positions in five years | 2023 | |||
| 476#601 | Up 106 rank positions in five years | 2024 | |||
| 504#584 | Up 622 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 448#624 | Up 377 rank positions in five years | 2023 | |||
| 843#375 | Up 1,409 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 895#364 | Up 1,220 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 463#611 | Up 237 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 878#367 | Up 1,076 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 476#600 | Up 1,624 rank positions in five years | 2025 |
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K names climbing fastest
Biggest K names of all time
By total applications since 1880 — a different list from the one above, because it counts every generation, not just this one.
Every other letter
Sources & methodology
Rankings and counts come from official birth card-application data, 1880–2025. Counts are card applications rather than births, and any name given to fewer than 5 babies of one sex in a year is not published — so “—” means genuinely uncommon, never invalid. The “climbing fastest” row ranks by five-year rank movement as a ratio, and a name must be inside the top 1,000 with at least 200 applications in 2025 to qualify — a looser gate than the site-wide trending list uses, because inside a single letter the stricter one leaves some letters empty. Letter shares are measured over listed names only, and the 25-year comparison is a generation rather than five years because letter fashion moves far more slowly than any one name.