Riley

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Riley boys named Riley

Girls and boys called Riley

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Riley crossed from boys to girls in 2003, and has stayed there for 23 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 81% girls, and in 2025 it was 73%.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 146 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.

By the numbers

Total US births

246,985

Estimated living today

237,000

Median age today

16

Peak year

2016

Best rank

22nd

Rank in 2025

48th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

141,960 / 105,025

How old the living Rileys are

born that year still alive today

Of the 246,985 babies given the name since 1880, about 237,000 are alive — 96 in every hundred. Roughly 136,000 of them are children and 2,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2009 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

From Ryley in Lancashire, from Old English ryge (“rye”) + leah (“clearing, meadow”). Equivalent.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Rileys

• Riley Reid (born 1991)American pornographic actress
• Riley Keough (born 1989)American actress
• Riley Steele (born 1987)American pornographic actress
• Riley McGree (born 1998)Australian association football player
• Riley Voelkel (born 1990)American actress
• Riley Smith (born 1978)American actor-model
• Dylan Riley Synder (born 1997)American actor
• Riley Salmon (born 1976)volleyball player

People named Riley with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Riley is most common

• CA22,879
• TX17,618
• FL12,275
• NY11,086
• PA10,239
• OH10,221
• IL8,589
• MI8,403
• NC8,247
• GA8,043

Relative to how many babies each state records, Riley is most concentrated in Alaska (2.2×), Nevada (2.2×), Idaho (1.8×), Utah (1.8×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 2016

The most popular girls’ names the year Riley peaked:

• Emma
• Olivia
• Ava
• Sophia
• Isabella
• Mia

All the names of 2016

Riley elsewhere

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.

Riley: births by region

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

By canton, Riley is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.01% of children were given it – 40 of them.

Riley: rank by region

In 2025, Riley was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Riley appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (326th).

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.

Riley by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Riley 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.

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

• Rileigh
• Rilee
• Rilynn
• Rilla
• Rilyn

Riley against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Riley vs Rileigh
• Riley vs Rilee
• Riley vs Rilynn
• Riley vs Rilla
• Riley vs Rilyn

Compare Riley with a name of your own