Humanverse

Rena vs Renn

American parents have registered 39,247 Renas since 1880, against 627 Renns. Rena is still ahead, with 75 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Rena Renn

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 2024, when Rena had 65 and Renn had 44.

Side by side

  Rena Renn
Total US births 39,247627
Most in one year 57862
Babies in 2025 7545
Estimated living today 19,000610
Median age today 587
Peak year 19622023
Best rank 400th girls4,886th boys
Rank in 2025 2,387th5,399th
First recorded 18801936
Girls / boys 39,124 / 123266 / 361

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 Renns are over 7. That is 51 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 Rena Renn
England and Wales 136112
Scotland 35

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 Renn.