Humanverse

Railey vs Raina

American parents have registered 12,453 Rainas since 1880, against 820 Raileys. Raina is still ahead, with 287 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Railey against Raina, 1880 to 2025 0 100 200 300 400 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Railey Raina

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

Raina has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1946 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2006, when Railey had 51 and Raina had 286.

Side by side

  Railey Raina
Total US births 82012,453
Most in one year 51375
Babies in 2025 17287
Estimated living today 81012,000
Median age today 1519
Peak year 20072011
Best rank 3,428th girls737th girls
Rank in 2025 6,546th914th
First recorded 19951946
Girls / boys 772 / 4812,453 / 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 Rainas alive today are over 19; half the Raileys are over 15. That is 4 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 Railey Raina
France 770 Raïley575 Raïna

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: Railey and Raina.