Rhys
Rhys reached its high-water mark in 2024 at number 352, and has been recorded 15,221 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 410th. About 15,000 Rhyses are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 9.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Rhys boys named Rhys
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 15,221
- Estimated living today
- 15,000
- Median age today
- 9
- Peak year
- 2024
- Best rank
- 352nd
- Rank in 2025
- 410th
- First recorded
- 1929
- Girls / boys
- 887 / 14,334
How old the living Rhyses are
born that year still alive today
Of the 15,221 babies given the name since 1929, about 15,000 are alive — 98 in every hundred. Roughly 12,000 of them are children and 100 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2016 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.
Where the name comes from
Origin Welsh
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Rhyss
- Rhys Ifans (born 1967)Welsh actor
- Matthew Rhys (born 1974)Welsh actor
- Rhys McClenaghan (born 1999)Irish artistic gymnast
- Rhys ap Gruffydd (1132–1197)ruler of the kingdom of Deheubarth
- Rhys Wakefield (born 1988)Australian actor
- Rhys Williams (born 2001)English footballer
- Rhys Darby (born 1974)New Zealand actor, comedian and voice actor
- Rhys Williams (born 1984)British hurdling athlete
People named Rhys with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Rhys is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Rhys is most concentrated in Colorado (2.4×), Washington (2.1×), Delaware (2.0×), Nevada (2.0×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2024
The most popular boys’ names the year Rhys peaked:
Rhys elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Rhys | 24,524 | 49th |
| Scotland boys | Rhys | 3,264 | 30th |
| Ireland boys | Rhys | 1,790 | 67th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Rhys | 1,146 | 25th |
| New Zealand boys | Rhys | 967 | 74th |
| France boys | Rhys | 50 | 5,636th |
| Belgium boys | Rhys | 11 | 1,223rd |
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.
Rhys: rank by region
In 2016, Rhys was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Rhys | 765 | 6 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Rhys 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 | Rhys | 7 | 16 |
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.
Related names
Rhys 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.