Humanverse

Rainee vs Rainey

American parents have registered 2,632 Raineys since 1880, against 700 Rainees. Rainey is still ahead, with 76 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Rainee Rainey

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 103 years in which either name was published, Rainey for 102 years and Rainee for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Rainee Rainey
Total US births 7002,632
Most in one year 2390
Babies in 2025 2076
Estimated living today 6902,300
Median age today 2119
Peak year 19942022
Best rank 4,376th girls2,123rd girls
Rank in 2025 5,917th2,368th
First recorded 19621901
Girls / boys 700 / 02,182 / 450

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 Rainees alive today are over 21; half the Raineys are over 19. That is 2 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 Rainee Rainey
England and Wales 651

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: Rainee and Rainey.