Humanverse

Ree vs Reece

American parents have registered 26,917 Reeces since 1880, against 305 Rees. Reece is still ahead, with 877 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ree against Reece, 1880 to 2025 0 250 500 750 1k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ree Reece

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 138 years in which either name was published, Reece for 137 years and Ree for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Ree Reece
Total US births 30526,917
Most in one year 17998
Babies in 2025 under 5877
Estimated living today 17025,000
Median age today 6917
Peak year 19522001
Best rank 3,201st girls344th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked460th
First recorded 19081880
Girls / boys 300 / 54,949 / 21,968

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 Rees alive today are over 69; half the Reeces are over 17. That is 52 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 Ree Reece
England and Wales 324,484

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: Ree and Reece.