Kaylee
- Pronunciation
- [Kay-lee]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Variant Of Katherine. Pure. Variant Of Kay And Kayla Keeper Of The Keys: Pure.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Kaylee
Kaylee is a modern American name with no significant pre-20th-century history. The name appears in SSA records starting in the 1970s and accelerates dramatically through the 1980s and 1990s. Etymological readings derive Kaylee from various combinations: Kay (a short form of Katherine, ultimately Greek katharos meaning "pure") plus the diminutive -lee; or from the Irish Gaelic cailíne (girl); or as a creative blend of Kay and Kaylie.
The name belongs to the broader category of contemporary American girls' names ending in -lee or -ley — alongside Bailey, Hailey, Riley, Kaylee, Kelsey, Marley, and Carley. This phonetic cluster surged through the 1990s and 2000s in American naming. Kaylee climbed from outside the US top 500 in 1980 to the US top 50 girls' rank by 2009 and has held a top-100 range since.
Notable bearers include the fictional Kaylee Frye, the cheerful mechanic on Joss Whedon's 2002 series Firefly and the 2005 film Serenity, played by Jewel Staite — a character who anchored the name in millennial-era American pop-cultural memory. American figure skater Kaylee Reynolds, MMA fighter Kaylee Brown, and various contemporary models and reality-TV personalities provide additional modern bearers. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the popular -lee phonetic ending, the soft pronunciation that signals friendly accessibility, and the modern visual register that distinguishes it from longer formal names. Common nicknames Kay (the dominant short form), Kayls, and the rare Lee each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Kaylie, Kayleigh, Kayli, and Caylee have their own SSA tracking. There are no significant international variants since the name is essentially American.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Kaylee
US Popularity History (1998–2025)
Annual US births named Kaylee by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2009 with 7,219 girls named Kaylee (girl rank #26 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #255 for girls (1,205 US births). That's 229 places below its 2009 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 Kaylee 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 Kaylee the strongest states are Mississippi, Hawaii, Alaska.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mississippi | #67 | 334 |
| 2 | Hawaii | #92 | 80 |
| 3 | Alaska | #110 | 31 |
| 4 | Georgia | #112 | 831 |
| 5 | Texas | #113 | 2,570 |
| 6 | Alabama | #118 | 389 |
| 7 | New York | #119 | 1,364 |
| 8 | California | #120 | 2,805 |
| 9 | New Jersey | #122 | 624 |
| 10 | North Dakota | #122 | 57 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Kaylee in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kayleigh | Warrior | Female | Scottish |
Looking for names like Kaylee?
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 Kaylee to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Kaylee against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).