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Ramel vs Ramsey

American parents have registered 8,861 Ramseys since 1880, against 1,561 Ramels. Ramsey is still ahead, with 154 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ramel against Ramsey, 1880 to 2025 0 80 160 240 320 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ramel Ramsey

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

Ramsey has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1894 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1985, when Ramel had 54 and Ramsey had 115.

Side by side

  Ramel Ramsey
Total US births 1,5618,861
Most in one year 54265
Babies in 2025 11154
Estimated living today 1,5008,200
Median age today 3121
Peak year 19852017
Best rank 1,304th boys1,207th boys
Rank in 2025 7,194th1,959th
First recorded 19671894
Girls / boys 0 / 1,5612,259 / 6,602

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 Ramels alive today are over 31; half the Ramseys are over 21. That is 10 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 Ramel Ramsey
England and Wales 63229

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: Ramel and Ramsey.