Kayla
- Pronunciation
- [Kay-la]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Variant Of Kay. Keeper Of The Keys: Pure. Also Kayla Is A Character On Daytime TV Days Of Our Lives.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Kayla
Kayla has multiple proposed origins, none entirely dominant. The most credible direct etymology connects Kayla to a creative blend of Kay (a short form of Katherine, ultimately Greek katharos meaning "pure") and the popular -la ending. A separate Hebrew line derives Kayla from the Yiddish/Hebrew Kayla or Kaila, sometimes interpreted as "who is like God?" or as a feminine form of "crown." A third reading derives Kayla from the Irish Caoilfhionn meaning "slender and fair."
The name's modern American emergence is essentially a 20th-century phenomenon, accelerating dramatically through the 1980s and 1990s. The single most influential cultural anchor is fictional: Kayla Brady, a long-running character on the NBC daytime soap opera Days of Our Lives (introduced 1986, played by Mary Beth Evans). The Kayla character's romantic storyline anchored the name in late-1980s American naming.
Kayla held a US top-25 girls' rank from 1989 through 2002 — over a decade of top-tier American popularity. The name has receded substantially since but remains in steady use. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the popular -la ending family (Kayla, Layla, Lyla, Stella), the soft two-syllable structure with a distinctive K-opening, and the in-built modern American register that contrasts with longer Hebrew or classical names. Common nicknames Kay, Kayls, and the rare Kayla-bear each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Kaela, Kaila, Cayla, and Keyla each have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Kayla (used in modern Israeli Hebrew naming) and the related Kaylee (see separate entry on Kaylee for the closely related modern American name family).
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Kayla
US Popularity History (1983–2025)
Annual US births named Kayla by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1991 with 18,545 girls named Kayla (girl rank #12 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #364 for girls (838 US births). That's 352 places below its 1991 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Kayla Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Kayla the strongest states are New Jersey, New York, Hawaii.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Jersey | #93 | 770 |
| 2 | New York | #114 | 1,384 |
| 3 | Hawaii | #126 | 72 |
| 4 | Delaware | #130 | 45 |
| 5 | California | #140 | 2,586 |
| 6 | Maryland | #146 | 343 |
| 7 | Florida | #183 | 977 |
| 8 | Connecticut | #191 | 169 |
| 9 | District of Columbia | #203 | 37 |
| 10 | Massachusetts | #210 | 282 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alabama | #537 | 92 |
| 2 | South Carolina | #506 | 97 |
| 3 | Tennessee | #485 | 154 |
| 4 | Missouri | #483 | 123 |
| 5 | Louisiana | #450 | 86 |
| 6 | Iowa | #434 | 70 |
| 7 | Arkansas | #427 | 59 |
| 8 | Wisconsin | #415 | 129 |
| 9 | Mississippi | #414 | 62 |
| 10 | Kentucky | #405 | 82 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Kayla in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kaylee | Variant Of Katherine. Pure. Variant Of Kay And Kayla Keeper Of The Keys: Pure. | Female | English |
Looking for names like Kayla?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Kayla to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Kayla against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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