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Reed vs Reem

American parents have registered 36,977 Reeds since 1880, against 3,610 Reems. Reed is still ahead, with 784 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Reed against Reem, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Reed 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

Reed has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1881 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2024, when Reed had 769 and Reem had 177.

Side by side

  Reed Reem
Total US births 36,9773,610
Most in one year 1,122177
Babies in 2025 784138
Estimated living today 31,0003,600
Median age today 1815
Peak year 20142024
Best rank 318th boys1,302nd girls
Rank in 2025 417th1,534th
First recorded 18811969
Girls / boys 921 / 36,0563,610 / 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 Reeds alive today are over 18; half the Reems are over 15. That is 3 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 Reed Reem
England and Wales 301961
France 5355
Scotland 620
Ireland 318

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: Reed and Reem.