Humanverse

Rene vs Renee

American parents have registered 187,513 Renees since 1880, against 72,779 Renes. Renee is still ahead, with 223 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Rene against Renee, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Rene Renee

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 145 years in which either name was published, Renee for 87 years and Rene for 58 years. The lead changed hands 13 times.

9 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Rene Renee
Total US births 72,779187,513
Most in one year 1,6496,045
Babies in 2025 210223
Estimated living today 59,000163,000
Median age today 4856
Peak year 19701964
Best rank 261st boys71st girls
Rank in 2025 1,091st1,098th
First recorded 18801889
Girls / boys 21,839 / 50,940185,896 / 1,617

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 Renees alive today are over 56; half the Renes are over 48. 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 Rene Renee
France 516,605 René221,735 Renée
Belgium 326 René3,343 Renée
England and Wales 5642,851
Norway 837225
Italy 237473
Ireland 10134
Northern Ireland 429

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: Rene and Renee.