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Rya vs Ryan

American parents have registered 991,747 Ryans since 1880, against 1,928 Ryas. Ryan is still ahead, with 3,925 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Rya against Ryan, 1880 to 2025 0 8k 16k 24k 32k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Rya Ryan

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

Ryan has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1906 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2024, when Rya had 190 and Ryan had 4,306.

Side by side

  Rya Ryan
Total US births 1,928991,747
Most in one year 19030,475
Babies in 2025 1403,925
Estimated living today 1,900948,000
Median age today 933
Peak year 20241985
Best rank 1,236th girls12th boys
Rank in 2025 1,518th99th
First recorded 19711906
Girls / boys 1,909 / 1927,624 / 964,123

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 Ryans alive today are over 33; half the Ryas are over 9. That is 24 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 Rya Ryan
England and Wales 13169,090
Scotland 921,221

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: Rya and Ryan.