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Rae vs Raelyn

American parents have registered 24,420 Raes since 1880, against 15,864 Raelyns. But in 2025 it was Raelyn that was commoner, 598 babies to 176.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Rae against Raelyn, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Rae Raelyn

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Rae for 117 years and Raelyn for 29 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Rae Raelyn
Total US births 24,42015,864
Most in one year 4121,034
Babies in 2025 176598
Estimated living today 15,00016,000
Median age today 579
Peak year 19562016
Best rank 453rd girls317th girls
Rank in 2025 1,299th502nd
First recorded 18801949
Girls / boys 23,460 / 96015,768 / 96

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Raes alive today are over 57; half the Raelyns are over 9. That is 48 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Rae Raelyn
England and Wales 2,00835
Ireland 113

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Rae and Raelyn.