Kyle: Meaning of Baby Name Kyle

About the Name Kyle

Kyle descends from the Scottish Gaelic caol meaning "narrow" or "strait" — referring originally to a narrow body of water (the Kyle of Lochalsh, Kyle of Tongue, Kyle of Sutherland are all geographic features in northwestern Scotland). The surname identified medieval Scottish families originating from places near such narrow straits.

The transition from Scottish surname to American first name accelerated in the late 20th century. Kyle held a US top-25 boys' rank from 1981 through 2005 — over two decades of top-tier American popularity, peaking around 1990 at #18. The name has receded since but remains in steady use. Notable bearers include American basketball player Kyle Lowry (NBA All-Star), American actor Kyle MacLachlan (FBI agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks, born 1959), American entrepreneur Kyle MacDonald (the One Red Paperclip viral story), and various contemporary athletes and actors.

The name's appeal is its compact Scottish-American masculinity — one short syllable, hard consonants, instantly readable, and tonal versatility across casual and formal registers. The name reads as both rugged-Scottish and contemporary American. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — Ky, Kylie (the related but distinct popular feminine name, see separate entry), and the rare Kylee each carry distinct registers. There are no significant international variants since the name's first-name use is essentially Scottish-to-American. The original Scottish geographic features (Kyle of Lochalsh, etc.) remain in use as Scottish place names.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.

Quick Facts About Kyle

276

Gaelic baby names in our dictionary

210

Gaelic male names

99

4-letter K-names in our dictionary

476

K-male names total

1974–2025

years of US SSA records (52 total)

449,486

total US births named Kyle (all years)

US Popularity History (1974–2025)

📉 Falling fast: Kyle dropped 195 places in the US boys ranking over the last 5 years (#314 in 2020 → #509 in 2025).

Annual US births named Kyle by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1990 with 22,710 boys named Kyle (boy rank #18 that year).

Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #509 for boys (594 US births). That's 491 places below its 1990 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.

Where in the US Is Kyle Most Popular?

Average boy-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 boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Kyle the strongest states are Alaska, Delaware, Maine.

Strongest boys-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Alaska	#147	48
2	Delaware	#151	40
3	Maine	#172	27
4	Hawaii	#176	53
5	Rhode Island	#199	31
6	New Hampshire	#211	19
7	New York	#220	985
8	Montana	#231	23
9	Massachusetts	#234	310
10	New Jersey	#261	387

Weakest boys-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Colorado	#473	109
2	Tennessee	#470	177
3	Arizona	#462	164
4	Kansas	#451	72
5	Wisconsin	#431	132
6	Iowa	#426	65
7	Mississippi	#420	58
8	Utah	#417	105
9	South Carolina	#414	121
10	North Carolina	#413	260

Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Kyle in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.

Variant Forms

Name	Meaning	Gender	Origin
Kile	A Place-Name Referring To The Narrows: A Wood Or A Church.	Male	Irish
Kiley	Boomerang. Variant Of Kylie. Pretty.	Female	Irish
Kye	A Place-Name Referring To The Narrows: A Wood Or A Church.	Male	Irish
Kylan	A Place-Name Referring To The Narrows: A Wood Or A Church.	Male	Irish
Kylar	A Place-Name Referring To The Narrows: A Wood Or A Church.	Male	Irish
Kylen	A Place-Name Referring To The Narrows: A Wood Or A Church.	Male	Irish
Kyler	A Place-Name Referring To The Narrows: A Wood Or A Church.	Male	Irish
Kyrell	A Place-Name Referring To The Narrows: A Wood Or A Church.	Male	Irish

Looking for names like Kyle?

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Compare Kyle to Other Popular Names

Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Kyle against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).

Kyle vs Liam 239,320 births since 2014

Kyle vs Noah 230,181 births since 2014

Kyle vs Oliver 164,076 births since 2014

Kyle vs William 159,918 births since 2014

Kyle vs James 157,850 births since 2014

Kyle vs Elijah 153,351 births since 2014

Kyle vs Benjamin 147,449 births since 2014

Kyle vs Lucas 141,302 births since 2014

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