Rakan vs Rakia

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Rakan Rakia

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 51 years in which either name was published, Rakan for 26 years and Rakia for 25 years. The lead changed hands 7 times.

• 1974–1995 Rakia ahead
• 1996 Rakan ahead
• 1997 Rakia ahead
• 1998 Rakan ahead
• 1999–2000 Rakia ahead
• 2001–2003 Rakan ahead
• 2004 Rakia ahead
• 2005–2025 Rakan ahead

Side by side

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 Rakias alive today are over 32; half the Rakans are over 8. That is 24 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

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

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

• Rakan vs Rakeem
• Rakan vs Rakim
• Rakia vs Rakeem
• Rakia vs Rakim