Humanverse

Ryley

Ryley reached its high-water mark in 2007 at number 1,021, and has been recorded 7,197 times in all. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 3,848th. About 7,100 Ryleys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 19.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 50 100 150 200 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Ryley boys named Ryley

Girls and boys called Ryley

Share of the name given to girls, 1880 to 2025 0% 25% 50% 75% 100% 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Ryley crossed from boys to girls in 2016, and has stayed there for 7 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 71% girls, and in 2025 it was 58%.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 38 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
7,197
Estimated living today
7,100
Median age today
19
Peak year
2007
Best rank
1,021st
Rank in 2025
3,848th
First recorded
1981
Girls / boys
3,341 / 3,856

How old the living Ryleys are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 100 200 300 400 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 7,197 babies given the name since 1981, about 7,100 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 3,100 of them are children and 0 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2006 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 a surname

Variant of Riley.

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

Where Ryley is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Ryley is most concentrated in Washington (2.9×), Minnesota (2.5×), Florida (2.0×), Colorado (1.9×).

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

Names of 2007

The most popular boys’ names the year Ryley peaked:

All the names of 2007

Ryley elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
England and Wales boys Ryley 2,064 213th
Scotland boys Ryley 170 200th
France boys Ryley 155 2,226th
England and Wales girls Ryley 85 2,627th
Northern Ireland boys Ryley 42 204th
Ireland boys Ryley 40 366th
France girls Ryley 10 5,493rd
Scotland girls Ryley 6 765th
Ireland girls Ryley 3 910th

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.

Related names

Ryley against another name

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

Compare Ryley with a name of your own

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.