The most used girls' names beginning with K in 2025

K is a letter of variety rather than volume. The ONS recorded 4,460 girls given a K name in 2025, but spread across 314 different spellings, and none of them reaches the top 100. Kiara at 341 babies and Khadija at 340 are the two leaders and they are almost exactly level, which happens rarely at the head of a letter.

ONS rank (all girls' names)	Name	Babies in 2025	Meaning and origin
144	Kiara	341	Modern; either an Italian reading of Chiara, bright, or an independent coinage; both are argued
146	Khadija	340	Arabic, usually read as premature child; the Prophet Muhammad's first wife
216	Khadijah	219	A spelling of Khadija, the Prophet Muhammad's first wife
265	Kaia	173	Modern; used as a Scandinavian form of Katherine and as a Hawaiian word for sea
386	Kayla	110	A modern American coinage, in wide use from the 1980s; earlier links to Kelilah are disputed
388	Keira	109	Anglicised Irish Ciara, dark-haired, respelled in English
451	Kira	89	Either a Russian feminine of Cyrus or a respelling of Irish Ciara; both are current
455	Kyra	88	A modern English respelling of Kira, of the same divided origin
483	Kaira	82	Modern; no settled etymology, though Sanskrit and Punjabi readings are offered
568	Kiana	70	Modern, chiefly American; a Hawaiian form of Diana is one reading among several
642	Keziah	60	Hebrew, cassia, the spice; a daughter of Job
650	Katie	59	English pet form of Katherine, of disputed meaning; the Greek link to purity is a later reworking

The most used boys' names beginning with K in 2025

The boys' letter has the same character in a stronger form. Only 8,609 boys were given a K name, thirteenth among the letters, yet those names came in 427 different spellings, the fourth-highest count in the alphabet after A, M and R. Kai at 672 is the sole K name in the boys' top 100.

ONS rank (all boys' names)	Name	Babies in 2025	Meaning and origin
78	Kai	672	Several unrelated sources: Hawaiian sea, Frisian short form of Gerhard, Welsh Cai and Japanese readings
122	Kit	413	Medieval English pet form of Christopher, bearer of Christ
192	Kian	263	Irish Cian, ancient or enduring; a Persian name Kian is separate
199	Koa	259	Hawaiian, a warrior, and the koa tree
220	Kayden	226	A modern American coinage on the pattern of Aiden; no older etymology
249	Kairo	187	A modern respelling of Cairo, from Arabic al-Qahira, the victorious
252	Khalid	185	Arabic khalid, eternal or everlasting
292	Kevin	157	Anglicised Irish Caoimhin, from caomh, gentle or beloved
321	Kylo	138	A coinage from the 2015 Star Wars films, with no earlier record
329	Kingsley	129	English place name and surname, king's meadow
331	Khalil	128	Arabic khalil, close friend, a title given to Abraham
352	Kaleb	119	A spelling of Caleb, of two contested Hebrew readings

Which K names are rising and which are falling

Climbing

There is exactly one published movement figure for the entire letter. Kai fell 6 places in 2025 to 78th, and is 8 places higher than it was in 2015. That is the complete record. Any statement that a K name is rising in England and Wales cannot be supported from the ONS tables, and none is made here.

Slipping

The same single figure is the only fall the ONS reports for K. Nothing else in either list is inside the top 100, so nothing else has a published direction. Where other pages in this series can describe a decade of movement, K allows one sentence about one name, and the honest thing to do is say so rather than fill the space.

What the published change columns cannot tell you

This is the letter where the top-100 cutoff bites hardest. Khadija, Khadijah, Kaia, Kayla, Keira, Kira, Kyra, Kit, Kian, Koa, Kayden, Kairo and Khalid all have exact counts in the ONS full 2025 list, and not one of them has an official change figure. The counts below are reliable; the trajectory of any name in them is not published.

How big a letter K really is

The gap between K's rank for babies and its rank for distinct names is the widest in the alphabet on the boys' side: thirteenth by babies, fourth by number of different names. That is a letter made of hundreds of small entries rather than a few large ones. For girls the pattern is similar, ninth by distinct names and nineteenth by babies.

Three traditions share the letter without meeting. Khadija, Khadijah and Khalid come from Arabic; Kiaan, Kiara and Kaira sit in a South Asian group; and Kai, Kit, Kian and Kevin are Celtic, English or of contested origin. Kai itself has at least four unrelated sources, Hawaiian, Frisian, Welsh and Japanese, which is why no single meaning can be given for it honestly.

Further K names in the published 2025 list

The ONS full list does not stop at the tables above, and the counts stay exact all the way down. For girls the next names in order of use are Kaliyah at 53, Klara at 51, Kyla at 47, Kaya at 46, Karina at 40, Katherine at 40, Kehlani at 39, Kiera at 37, Kathleen at 34, Kara at 31, Kate at 31, Kamsiyochukwu at 30. For boys they are Kobe at 112, Kiaan at 106, Kaiden at 103, Kyrie at 98, Kyro at 97, Kayce at 85, Kiyan at 85, Krishiv at 85, Kasper at 83, Kareem at 79, Kobie at 77, Kenzo at 76. Each figure is the exact number of babies registered with that exact spelling during 2025, taken from the ONS full-list table rather than from the top 100. The letter carries 314 different girls' names and 427 different boys' names in the published data altogether, and any name given to two or fewer babies has been removed from it.

Choosing a K name: what the data changes

K is the letter to choose if you want a name that is recognisable but statistically uncommon in England and Wales. Almost every K name sits below rank 100, so the practical question is spelling rather than popularity: Keira, Kira and Kyra are three separate rows in the ONS list for one sound, and a child will spend a lifetime correcting whichever one you pick.

Baby names starting with K: girls and boys