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Raine vs Rainer

American parents have registered 3,860 Raines since 1880, against 1,276 Rainers. Raine is still ahead, with 164 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Raine against Rainer, 1880 to 2025 0 50 100 150 200 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Raine Rainer

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 72 years in which either name was published, Raine for 50 years and Rainer for 22 years. The lead changed hands 12 times.

9 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Raine Rainer
Total US births 3,8601,276
Most in one year 19353
Babies in 2025 16434
Estimated living today 3,8001,200
Median age today 1315
Peak year 20222018
Best rank 1,395th girls2,445th boys
Rank in 2025 1,548th3,379th
First recorded 19541955
Girls / boys 3,255 / 60516 / 1,260

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 Rainers alive today are over 15; half the Raines are over 13. That is 2 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 Raine Rainer
England and Wales 63527

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: Raine and Rainer.