Humanverse

Raeleigh vs Raelyn

American parents have registered 15,864 Raelyns since 1880, against 2,371 Raeleighs. Raelyn is still ahead, with 598 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Raeleigh 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

Raelyn has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1949 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2009, when Raeleigh had 95 and Raelyn had 289.

Side by side

  Raeleigh Raelyn
Total US births 2,37115,864
Most in one year 1381,034
Babies in 2025 74598
Estimated living today 2,40016,000
Median age today 109
Peak year 20172016
Best rank 1,580th girls317th girls
Rank in 2025 2,410th502nd
First recorded 19941949
Girls / boys 2,371 / 015,768 / 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.

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 Raeleigh Raelyn
England and Wales 335

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: Raeleigh and Raelyn.