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Rebecca vs Rebeka

American parents have registered 758,106 Rebeccas since 1880, against 2,660 Rebekas. Rebecca is still ahead, with 872 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Rebecca against Rebeka, 1880 to 2025 0 5k 10k 15k 20k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Rebecca 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

Rebecca has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2009, when Rebecca had 2,478 and Rebeka had 60.

Side by side

  Rebecca Rebeka
Total US births 758,1062,660
Most in one year 16,80193
Babies in 2025 87213
Estimated living today 649,0002,600
Median age today 4728
Peak year 19811991
Best rank 12th girls1,619th girls
Rank in 2025 349th7,885th
First recorded 18801957
Girls / boys 755,992 / 2,1142,660 / 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 Rebeccas alive today are over 47; half the Rebekas are over 28. That is 19 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 Rebecca Rebeka
England and Wales 45,862463
France 14,235190
Scotland 13,67847
Ireland 11,29374
Northern Ireland 2,79510
Switzerland 1,06790
Belgium 8936
Poland 66155

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: Rebecca and Rebeka.