Humanverse

Rena vs Renesmae

American parents have registered 39,247 Renas since 1880, against 531 Renesmaes. Rena is still ahead, with 75 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Rena against Renesmae, 1880 to 2025 0 150 300 450 600 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Rena Renesmae

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

Rena 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 2023, when Rena had 96 and Renesmae had 63.

Side by side

  Rena Renesmae
Total US births 39,247531
Most in one year 57863
Babies in 2025 7547
Estimated living today 19,000530
Median age today 585
Peak year 19622023
Best rank 400th girls2,730th girls
Rank in 2025 2,387th3,296th
First recorded 18802012
Girls / boys 39,124 / 123531 / 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 Renas alive today are over 58; half the Renesmaes are over 5. That is 53 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 Renesmae
England and Wales 136383

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 Renesmae.