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Reid vs Reily

American parents have registered 41,783 Reids since 1880, against 902 Reilys. Reid is still ahead, with 1,184 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Reid against Reily, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Reid Reily

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

Reid has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1886 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2006, when Reid had 708 and Reily had 82.

Side by side

  Reid Reily
Total US births 41,783902
Most in one year 1,46482
Babies in 2025 1,1845
Estimated living today 38,000890
Median age today 1519
Peak year 20142006
Best rank 260th boys2,398th boys
Rank in 2025 293rdunranked
First recorded 18861992
Girls / boys 992 / 40,791366 / 536

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 Reilys alive today are over 19; half the Reids are over 15. That is 4 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 Reid Reily
England and Wales 1,25635
Scotland 954

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: Reid and Reily.