Humanverse

Riven vs Rivka

American parents have registered 10,022 Rivkas since 1880, against 513 Rivens. Rivka is still ahead, with 464 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Riven against Rivka, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Riven Rivka

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

Rivka has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1949 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2023, when Riven had 75 and Rivka had 384.

Side by side

  Riven Rivka
Total US births 51310,022
Most in one year 75464
Babies in 2025 70464
Estimated living today 5109,800
Median age today 414
Peak year 20252025
Best rank 2,390th boys628th girls
Rank in 2025 2,390th628th
First recorded 20081949
Girls / boys 201 / 31210,022 / 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 Rivkas alive today are over 14; half the Rivens are over 4. That is 10 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Riven Rivka
England and Wales 132600
France 15565
Belgium 1642

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: Riven and Rivka.