Is Kayla in the Bible?

No one named Kayla appears in the Bible. Kayla is a modern English name, made from the sounds kay and -la, and it became common in the United States after 1982, when a character named Kayla Brady joined the soap opera Days of Our Lives. It does not come from Hebrew or from any name in Scripture.

Is Kayla in the Bible?

Kayla is absent from the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible and from every translation, so no verse mentions it. It first entered the American top 1,000 for girls in 1959, more than eighteen centuries after the New Testament was written.

The Bible name that looks most like it belongs to a town. Keilah was one of the towns of the lowland of Judah (Joshua 15:44), and David saved it from a Philistine raid (1 Samuel 23:1–13). Behind the Name lists the spelling Keila as a variant of Kayla and notes that some parents may have taken it from the town, but Kayla itself does not come from Keilah.

Where does the name Kayla come from?

Name references, including Behind the Name and the Oxford Dictionary of First Names, describe Kayla as a recent English creation that joins two sounds already popular in American names, kay and -la. Similar names such as Kaylee shaped its use. Kaila, Cayla, Keila and Keyla are other spellings of the same name.

Kay is a short form of Katherine and of other names beginning with K, so Kayla is sometimes given Katherine’s meaning, “pure.” In the early Christian era Katherine became associated with the Greek word katharos, “pure,” but that meaning belongs to Katherine; Kayla took only the sound kay. Kayla is also sometimes traced to Cadhla, an Irish name meaning “beautiful.” The two names are separate, and name references do not derive one from the other.

Does Kayla have a Hebrew meaning?

No. Several Hebrew words sound a little like Kayla, and their meanings are often attached to it. Kelil means “crown, wreath” or “complete, perfect,” and it is the source of the Hebrew name Kelila. Kal means “light” or “swift.” Kallah means “bride,” and it is the word used for the bride in the Song of Songs. None of these words is the origin of Kayla, which was built from English sounds.

When did Kayla become popular?

Through the 1960s and 1970s Kayla stayed in the lower half of the American top 1,000, and in 1981 it ranked 581st. In 1982, the year Kayla Brady first appeared on Days of Our Lives, it jumped to 133rd. By 1987 it was 27th, and in 1995 and 1996 it reached 11th, its highest rank. It has fallen steadily since then and ranked 364th in 2025. The name is also used in French-speaking countries: it ranked 146th in France in 2024 and 83rd in Quebec in 2025.

Does Kayla have a meaning in Christianity?

Kayla belongs neither to Scripture nor to the calendar of saints, and Christian tradition gives it no meaning of its own. The meanings sometimes offered for it, “pure,” “crown” or “beautiful,” belong to Katherine, Kelila and Cadhla. The Bible gives Christians no list of names they must choose from.

Related reading

• Katherine Is Not in the Bible — and Nobody Knows What It Means
• Is Your Name in the Bible? A Directory of Names