Humanverse

Rain vs Raissa

American parents have registered 4,806 Rains since 1880, against 545 Raissas. Rain is still ahead, with 275 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Rain against Raissa, 1880 to 2025 0 80 160 240 320 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Rain Raissa

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 63 years in which either name was published, Rain for 48 years and Raissa for 15 years. The lead changed hands 14 times.

11 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Rain Raissa
Total US births 4,806545
Most in one year 27520
Babies in 2025 275under 5
Estimated living today 4,800530
Median age today 1228
Peak year 20231989
Best rank 1,212th girls4,522nd girls
Rank in 2025 1,235thunranked
First recorded 19561959
Girls / boys 3,618 / 1,188545 / 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 Raissas alive today are over 28; half the Rains are over 12. That is 16 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 Rain Raissa
France 52,600
England and Wales 307108

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: Rain and Raissa.