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Rebecca vs Rebeccah

American parents have registered 758,106 Rebeccas since 1880, against 1,571 Rebeccahs. Rebecca is still ahead, with 872 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Rebecca against Rebeccah, 1880 to 2025 0 5k 10k 15k 20k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Rebecca Rebeccah

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

Rebecca has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1991, when Rebecca had 13,330 and Rebeccah had 186.

Side by side

  Rebecca Rebeccah
Total US births 758,1061,571
Most in one year 16,801186
Babies in 2025 872under 5
Estimated living today 649,0001,500
Median age today 4736
Peak year 19811991
Best rank 12th girls1,000th girls
Rank in 2025 349thunranked
First recorded 18801951
Girls / boys 755,992 / 2,1141,571 / 0

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 Rebeccas alive today are over 47; half the Rebeccahs are over 36. That is 11 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 Rebecca Rebeccah
England and Wales 45,86224
France 14,2355

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: Rebecca and Rebeccah.