Humanverse

Ree vs Reem

American parents have registered 3,610 Reems since 1880, against 305 Rees. Reem is still ahead, with 138 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Ree Reem

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 93 years in which either name was published, Reem for 57 years and Ree for 36 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Ree Reem
Total US births 3053,610
Most in one year 17177
Babies in 2025 under 5138
Estimated living today 1703,600
Median age today 6915
Peak year 19522024
Best rank 3,201st girls1,302nd girls
Rank in 2025 unranked1,534th
First recorded 19081969
Girls / boys 300 / 53,610 / 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 Rees alive today are over 69; half the Reems are over 15. That is 54 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.

Country Ree Reem
England and Wales 3961

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: Ree and Reem.