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Rena vs Rene

American parents have registered 72,779 Renes since 1880, against 39,247 Renas. Rene is still ahead, with 210 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Rena against Rene, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Rena Rene

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 146 years in which either name was published, Rene for 80 years and Rena for 66 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Rena Rene
Total US births 39,24772,779
Most in one year 5781,649
Babies in 2025 75210
Estimated living today 19,00059,000
Median age today 5848
Peak year 19621970
Best rank 400th girls261st boys
Rank in 2025 2,387th1,091st
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 39,124 / 12321,839 / 50,940

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 Renas alive today are over 58; half the Renes are over 48. That is 10 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 Rena Rene
France 45516,605 René
England and Wales 136564
Ireland 6210

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: Rena and Rene.