Is Kelly a male or female name?
Kelly is predominantly associated with female records in the available name data. Without a country hint, NameGender returns female at 86%, based on 606,594 observations.
Result without a country hint
This is the response used when the request does not supply a country. It is a fallback, not a claim that every country has the same distribution.
- Association
- female
- Probability
- 86%
- Sample size
- 606,594
- Confidence
- high
Kelly by country
Only sources that publish observation counts appear in this table. The probability is the dominant-gender share within that country source; sample sizes from different countries cover different years and should not be treated as population rankings.
| Country | Association | Probability | Sample | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States US | female | 85% | 555,972 | ssa |
| France FR | female | 98% | 25,750 | insee |
| England and Wales GB | female | 99% | 10,802 | nrs |
| Canada CA | female | 88% | 8,010 | statcan |
| Ireland IE | female | 100% | 3,357 | cso |
| Switzerland CH | female | 98% | 1,424 | bfs |
| Spain ES | female | 100% | 780 | ine |
| Poland PL | female | 90% | 299 | pesel |
| Norway NO | female | 100% | 162 | ssb |
| Austria AT | female | 95% | 38 | statat |
Attested in 20 countries and territories
Presence means the name appears in a source for that country. Sources without counts cannot support a popularity share.
AT · AU · AZ · BE · BR · CA · CH · EE · ES · FR · GB · IE · IN · MT · NL · NO · NZ · PL · SE · US
Kelly over time
In the United States, 0% of the babies named Kelly in the 1880s were girls, against 75.7% in the 2020s. The name has changed sides over time, so the answer depends on when a person was born. In France, 80.8% of the babies named Kelly in the 1970s were girls, against 95.1% in the 2020s.
| Decade of birth | United States: girls | Babies | France: girls | Babies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1880s | 0% | 119 | — | |
| 1890s | 0% | 142 | — | |
| 1900s | 8% | 223 | — | |
| 1910s | 8% | 956 | — | |
| 1920s | 8% | 1,395 | — | |
| 1930s | 9% | 1,421 | — | |
| 1940s | 16% | 3,423 | — | |
| 1950s | 54% | 28,489 | — | |
| 1960s | 82% | 156,075 | — | |
| 1970s | 88% | 150,880 | 81% | 520 |
| 1980s | 92% | 119,330 | 98% | 6,430 |
| 1990s | 93% | 59,858 | 100% | 10,130 |
| 2000s | 93% | 23,155 | 99% | 5,260 |
| 2010s | 87% | 8,256 | 98% | 2,690 |
| 2020s | 76% | 2,250 | 95% | 615 |
Births per decade from the US Social Security Administration (1880–2024) and INSEE (France, 1900–2025); decades with fewer than 100 babies are left out. See boys' names that became girls' names and French names that changed sex.
Look up Kelly with a country
Send a reliable two-letter country code when you have one. Preserve probability, sample size, confidence and source with the category.
curl "https://namegender.com/api/v1/gender?name=Kelly&country=US" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer ng_live_xxxxxxxxxxxx"Copy failed. Select and copy the text.
Method and limits
Counted rows come from national registration sources that publish male and female totals. The attested-country list also includes sources that confirm presence but do not publish a sample size. Those two evidence types are kept separate.
Name data describes a population-level association. It does not identify an individual person's gender. Preserve unknown and low-confidence results, and do not use name inference for employment, medical, financial, insurance, legal or eligibility decisions.
Data version: 2026.10. Read the benchmark methodology and database provenance before applying a threshold.
Questions about Kelly
Is Kelly a male or female name?
Kelly is predominantly associated with female records in the available name data. Without a country hint, NameGender returns female at 86%, based on 606,594 observations.
Why can the result for Kelly change by country?
A name can have different observed distributions in different populations. A country hint narrows the evidence used by the API instead of treating one global result as universal.
Does the name Kelly identify a person's gender?
No. This page describes statistical associations in name records. It cannot identify an individual person and should not be used for consequential decisions.