Humanverse

Richmond vs Rickey

American parents have registered 62,391 Rickeys since 1880, against 4,305 Richmonds. Rickey is still ahead, with 45 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Richmond against Rickey, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Richmond Rickey

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 146 years in which either name was published, Rickey for 85 years and Richmond for 61 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Richmond Rickey
Total US births 4,30562,391
Most in one year 733,818
Babies in 2025 1745
Estimated living today 2,20048,000
Median age today 4464
Peak year 19211958
Best rank 790th boys106th boys
Rank in 2025 5,399th2,798th
First recorded 18801924
Girls / boys 0 / 4,305674 / 61,717

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 Rickeys alive today are over 64; half the Richmonds are over 44. That is 20 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 Richmond Rickey
England and Wales 1186

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: Richmond and Rickey.