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Reed vs Reeves

American parents have registered 36,977 Reeds since 1880, against 1,059 Reeveses. Reed is still ahead, with 784 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Reed Reeves

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 1912, when Reed had 43 and Reeves had 10.

Side by side

  Reed Reeves
Total US births 36,9771,059
Most in one year 1,12281
Babies in 2025 78466
Estimated living today 31,000810
Median age today 1810
Peak year 20142024
Best rank 318th boys2,156th boys
Rank in 2025 417th2,421st
First recorded 18811912
Girls / boys 921 / 36,05682 / 977

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 Reeveses are over 10. That is 8 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 Reeves
England and Wales 3017

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 Reeves.