Humanverse

Ragna vs Ragnar

American parents have registered 787 Ragnars since 1880, against 201 Ragnas. Ragnar is still ahead, with 52 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ragna against Ragnar, 1880 to 2025 0 25 50 75 100 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ragna Ragnar

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

Of the 42 years in which either name was published, Ragna for 26 years and Ragnar for 16 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Ragna Ragnar
Total US births 201787
Most in one year 1897
Babies in 2025 under 552
Estimated living today 0750
Median age today 984
Peak year 19152023
Best rank 1,800th girls1,718th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked2,539th
First recorded 18851915
Girls / boys 201 / 00 / 787

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 Ragnas alive today are over 98; half the Ragnars are over 4. That is 94 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Ragna Ragnar
Norway 9783,817
Belgium 1170

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: Ragna and Ragnar.