Humanverse

Rickey vs Ricki

American parents have registered 62,391 Rickeys since 1880, against 6,745 Rickis. Rickey is still ahead, with 45 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Rickey Ricki

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

Rickey has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1924 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1995, when Rickey had 251 and Ricki had 226.

Side by side

  Rickey Ricki
Total US births 62,3916,745
Most in one year 3,818238
Babies in 2025 4528
Estimated living today 48,0005,800
Median age today 6446
Peak year 19581994
Best rank 106th boys941st girls
Rank in 2025 2,798th4,758th
First recorded 19241938
Girls / boys 674 / 61,7174,442 / 2,303

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 Rickis are over 46. That is 18 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 Rickey Ricki
England and Wales 6103

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: Rickey and Ricki.