Rainer
Rainer is a boy's name that peaked in 2018, when it was the 2,445th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 3,379th. About 1,200 Rainers are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 15.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Rainer boys named Rainer
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,276
- Estimated living today
- 1,200
- Median age today
- 15
- Peak year
- 2018
- Best rank
- 2,445th
- Rank in 2025
- 3,379th
- First recorded
- 1955
- Girls / boys
- 16 / 1,260
How old the living Rainers are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,276 babies given the name since 1955, about 1,200 are alive — 95 in every hundred. Roughly 670 of them are children and 40 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2010 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Notable Rainers
- Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926)Austrian poet and writer
- Rainer Weiss (1932–2025)American physicist
- Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945–1982)German filmmaker, playwright and actor
- Rainer Bonhof (born 1952)German footballer
- Rainer Woelki (born 1956)Catholic archbishop
- Rainer Schüttler (born 1976)German tennis player and coach
- Archduke Rainer Joseph of Austria (1783–1853)Austrian archduke
- Rainer Barzel (1924–2006)German politician
People named Rainer with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Rainer is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Rainer is most concentrated in California (4.5×), Texas (3.5×), New York (2.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2018
The most popular boys’ names the year Rainer peaked:
Rainer elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Norway boys | Rainer | 161 | 352nd |
| France boys | Rainer | 40 | 343rd |
| England and Wales boys | Rainer | 27 | 3,996th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Rainer among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Rainer | 1,704 | 5,922 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Rainer lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 247 men called Rainer were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Rainer | 31 | 0.058 | 1,420 |
| Palmas, Las | Rainer | 21 | 0.036 | 2,068 |
| Balears, Illes | Rainer | 22 | 0.035 | 1,604 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Rainer | 26 | 0.026 | 2,218 |
| Málaga | Rainer | 20 | 0.023 | 1,995 |
| Granada | Rainer | 7 | 0.015 | 2,308 |
Listed in 11 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 41 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Rainer against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.