Kaley

Meaning of Kaley

Kaley is most commonly treated as a modern Anglo-American respelling of the Scottish Gaelic term “céilidh” (kay-lee), a word that originally denoted a social gathering filled with music and dance and that itself traces back to Old Irish céle, “companion.” In practice, the name also inherits overtones from the composite Kay-Lee, so it carries the mid-century English sense of “pure” (from Katherine’s Kay) linked to the Old English “clearing” or “meadow” implied by Lee. Usage data from the U.S. Social Security Administration shows that Kaley slipped into national files in the late 1960s, escalated steadily until a turn-of-the-millennium high of No. 442 in 2003, and has been easing downward since, settling near the mid-800s in 2024—a trajectory that mirrors the broader, post-Y2K cooling of the Kaylee/Kayleigh cluster. Pop-culture visibility, most notably via actress Kaley Cuoco, provides the name with a recognizable, if understated, cultural anchor. Phonetically streamlined to a single, two-syllable English pronunciation—KAY-lee (/ˈkeɪli/)—Kaley offers parents a lightweight, convivial choice that nods both to Celtic conviviality and to contemporary American naming inventiveness without straying into linguistic obscurity.