Who started National Kayla Day?

It circulates through holiday listing pages and dated social posts, mostly from people naming one specific Kayla. No founder, sponsoring organisation or establishing document has been identified, and the oldest listing page still in the Internet Archive dates from 2022.

What does the name Kayla mean?

Behind the Name treats it as a combination of two phonetic elements, kay and la, and the Online Etymology Dictionary calls it an extended form of Kay. The Hebrew and Arabic glosses for crown or laurel circulate widely on commercial baby-name sites but appear in neither reference work.

When was the name Kayla most popular in the United States?

In 1996. The Social Security series puts the name's largest share of girl births in that year, and the widely repeated claim of a 1991 peak is wrong; Kayla ranked 11 in both 1995 and 1996.

National Kayla Day

Next celebratedFriday, January 15, 2027

Kaylas celebrate a name that jumped from 317 American baby girls to 2,275 in 1982, the year Days of Our Lives introduced Kayla Brady.

See how to celebrate

Countdown to the day

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Last updated August 19, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEJanuary 15

OBSERVED INUnited States

CATEGORYNames

ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY

Not documented

FIRST OBSERVED

Not documented

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

The trail begins with listings, not an announcement.

No founder, sponsoring organisation or establishing document for National Kayla Day has been identified. Its documented trail begins with holiday listing pages and dated social posts rather than with any announcement.

+ Know the story? Submit a founder Help us complete this holiday

INTRO

A name that went from 317 girls to 2,275

National Kayla Day honors a name whose arrival can be dated to a single year. American parents gave Kayla to 2,275 baby girls in one year, against 317 in the year before it. The year was 1982.

That January, NBC's Days of Our Lives introduced a character named Kayla Brady. The reference works credit her for what followed. The birth registry can date the change precisely, and it cannot explain it.

What the name means is a separate argument, and the reference works settle it in a way almost nobody repeats. The day that honors it is younger and thinner than the name.

ORIGINS

Kayla Day history

INTRODUCTION

Ask a commercial baby-name site what Kayla means and you will be offered Hebrew, Arabic, Irish, Yiddish and Greek. Ask the standard reference works and you get something stranger.

Behind the Name files Kayla's roots as two phonetic elements, kay and la, and types both as sounds rather than words. The Online Etymology Dictionary calls it an extended form of Kay. Neither offers an ancestor to translate.

CHAPTER 01

Twenty-three quiet years

The birth registry tells the same story in numbers. Kayla first reached the Social Security list of the thousand most-used girls' names in 1959, near the bottom of it.

Then it stayed there. Its best showing in all that time was rank 583, and in one of those years it fell off the list altogether.

CHAPTER 02

January 1982

The character arrived on January 18, 1982, created by the head writer Pat Falken Smith and played first by Catherine Mary Stewart. Behind the Name credits her directly, footnoting the reference author Cleveland Kent Evans.

The registry agrees about the timing and says nothing at all about cause. It logs the whole move inside one birth year, then leaves the question sitting there.

CHAPTER 03

The copies, and the peak

The same-sounding spellings followed rather than led. Kaila entered the national list in 1986, Cayla the year after it.

Kayla itself reached the American top twenty in 1988 and held that ground for seventeen years. Its peak came in 1996.

CHAPTER 04

The day itself

National Kayla Day sits on top of that record without adding much to it. No founder, sponsoring organisation or establishing document has been identified for it, and the oldest listing page the Internet Archive still holds was captured in 2022.

What does exist is people using it. A hotel in Fargo spent January 15 of 2024 thanking its general manager by name, and she was a Kayla.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Kayla joins the national list

The name reached the Social Security list of the thousand most-used American girls' names for the first time, well down the order.

A character arrives on daytime television

Days of Our Lives introduced Kayla Brady on January 18, and the name's birth count rose more than sevenfold that year.

The first respelling follows

Kaila entered the same national list at rank 911, four years after Kayla had already moved.

Kayla reaches the top twenty

The name entered the twenty most-used girls' names in the United States and stayed inside them for seventeen years.

The peak year

Kayla reached its highest share of American female births in any year on record.

The oldest archived listing

The oldest capture of a National Kayla Day listing page held by the Internet Archive was taken in August.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Kayla Day

CALENDAR

Too new for any saint's calendar.

Behind the Name's name-day database, which carries entries drawn from the European calendars, returns nothing at all for Kayla. A name coined in twentieth-century America has no saint's feast to inherit, so an American National Day is the only slot available to it.

EVIDENCE

A pop-culture claim you can actually test

A television character is an easy thing to credit and a hard thing to prove, and the federal birth series is what turns the claim into something a reader can check year by year. Kyla, said differently but ending the same way, held rank 528 in 1981 and 528 in 1982, so the wider fashion for names ending that way did not move with it.

TIMING

The day arrives while the name recedes

Kayla's American rank has slipped in every single year since 2007, so the observance now marks a name on its way out of fashion rather than into it. The people it honors are a bounded generation, and the registry can say almost exactly when they were born.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Kayla Day by the Numbers

985: Kayla's first US rank, 1959
15,269: US girls named Kayla in 1996
0.796%: Share of US girl births, 1996
838: US girls named Kayla in 2025
364: Kayla's US rank in 2025

GOOD TO KNOW

National Kayla Day Around the World

England & Wales

Still on the annual list in 2025, at rank 386.

Quebec, Canada

Ranked 83 in 2025, its most recent listed year.

France

Ranked 146 in 2024.

Ireland

Last ranked 89, in 2019.

Scotland

Last ranked 89, in 2018.

New South Wales, Australia

Last ranked 82, in 2012.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Kayla Day

Look up the year your Kayla was born

The Social Security Administration's popular names lookup returns a rank for every year the name made the list. Type in Kayla and you can see exactly where she landed on the curve.

POST

Post a shout-out with the hashtag

The tag #nationalkayladay is how the day actually moves, mostly among friends, colleagues and small businesses. Name the Kayla you mean and say what she did.

COMPARE

Compare the spellings before you write it down

Behind the Name files Kaila and Cayla as variants of the same name, and gives all three the same pronunciation. Ask which one you are dealing with before you print it on a cake.

READ

Read up on the Kaylas already in the record

Kayla Harrison won the first Olympic gold medal in judo by any American at London 2012, and Kayla Barron flew to the International Space Station on SpaceX Crew-3. Both are worth an hour of a January afternoon.

WATCH

Watch the role instead of reading about it

Mary Beth Evans took over the role of Kayla Brady in 1986. It is the one piece of this history you can watch rather than look up.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Kayla Day?

1 / 8

How many American girls were named Kayla in 1981, the year before the name jumped?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance with no legal standing, so it is a normal working day; the phrase does not appear in any Federal Register document.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

11sources

6primary records

5independently dated

Primary records

Social Security Administration2025

Popular Baby Names

The federal name lookups behind every Kayla rank and birth count here.

View source

Federal Register

Document search for "National Kayla Day"

Returns zero documents, which is the basis for the official-status answer.

View source

Internet Archive

Wayback Machine

The capture index searched for early listings of the day.

View source

United States Judo Federation2015

Kayla Harrison

The federation's own account of the first American Olympic judo gold.

View source

NASAMay 2022

Astronaut Biography: Kayla Barron

Barron's submarine service and her SpaceX Crew-3 flight to the space station.

View source

Hampton Inn & Suites Fargo Medical Center2024-01-15

National Kayla Day post, January 15, 2024

A dated business observance thanking a general manager named Kayla.

View source

Additional coverage

Behind the Name2026-05-26

Meaning, origin and history of the name Kayla

The onomastic entry giving two phonetic roots and per-country popularity.

View source

Behind the Name

Name Days for the name Kayla

A name-day database that returns no entries at all for Kayla.

View source

Behind the Name

Meaning, origin and history of the name Kyla

Kyla's separate pronunciation and derivation, used as the control name.

View source

Online Etymology Dictionary

Kayla

An independent reference calling Kayla an extended form of Kay.

View source

Wikipedia

Kayla Brady

The character's creation, debut date and original casting.

View source

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