Humanverse

Rebbecca vs Rebeka

American parents have registered 2,660 Rebekas since 1880, against 2,315 Rebbeccas. Rebeka is still ahead, with 13 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Rebbecca Rebeka

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 97 years in which either name was published, Rebbecca for 58 years and Rebeka for 39 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Rebbecca Rebeka
Total US births 2,3152,660
Most in one year 7493
Babies in 2025 under 513
Estimated living today 2,0002,600
Median age today 5028
Peak year 19751991
Best rank 1,415th girls1,619th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked7,885th
First recorded 19071957
Girls / boys 2,315 / 02,660 / 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 Rebbeccas alive today are over 50; half the Rebekas are over 28. That is 22 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 Rebbecca Rebeka
England and Wales 52463
Scotland 347

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: Rebbecca and Rebeka.