Humanverse

Ruba vs Rubin

American parents have registered 7,070 Rubins since 1880, against 518 Rubas. Rubin is still ahead, with 17 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ruba against Rubin, 1880 to 2025 0 40 80 120 160 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ruba Rubin

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

Rubin has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Ruba had 16 and Rubin had 17.

Side by side

  Ruba Rubin
Total US births 5187,070
Most in one year 19147
Babies in 2025 1617
Estimated living today 4903,200
Median age today 2151
Peak year 19961923
Best rank 5,065th girls502nd boys
Rank in 2025 6,838th5,399th
First recorded 19191880
Girls / boys 518 / 016 / 7,054

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 Rubins alive today are over 51; half the Rubas are over 21. That is 30 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 Ruba Rubin
England and Wales 72252

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: Ruba and Rubin.