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Rebecca vs Rebekkah

American parents have registered 758,106 Rebeccas since 1880, against 1,585 Rebekkahs. Rebecca is still ahead, with 872 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Rebecca Rebekkah

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 2014, when Rebecca had 1,782 and Rebekkah had 20.

Side by side

  Rebecca Rebekkah
Total US births 758,1061,585
Most in one year 16,80177
Babies in 2025 872under 5
Estimated living today 649,0001,500
Median age today 4732
Peak year 19811993
Best rank 12th girls1,854th girls
Rank in 2025 349thunranked
First recorded 18801956
Girls / boys 755,992 / 2,1141,585 / 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 Rebekkahs are over 32. That is 15 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 Rebekkah
England and Wales 45,86283
Scotland 13,6787

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 Rebekkah.