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Rae vs Raeya

American parents have registered 24,420 Raes since 1880, against 802 Raeyas. Rae is still ahead, with 176 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Rae against Raeya, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Rae Raeya

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

Rae has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2015, when Rae had 96 and Raeya had 33.

Side by side

  Rae Raeya
Total US births 24,420802
Most in one year 41280
Babies in 2025 17660
Estimated living today 15,000800
Median age today 576
Peak year 19562021
Best rank 453rd girls2,286th girls
Rank in 2025 1,299th2,822nd
First recorded 18802000
Girls / boys 23,460 / 960802 / 0

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 Raes alive today are over 57; half the Raeyas are over 6. That is 51 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 Rae Raeya
England and Wales 2,008442
Scotland 24613
Ireland 117

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: Rae and Raeya.