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Renata vs Renay

American parents have registered 14,616 Renatas since 1880, against 1,960 Renays. Renata is still ahead, with 635 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Renata against Renay, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Renata Renay

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 115 years in which either name was published, Renata for 101 years and Renay for 14 years. The lead changed hands 8 times.

Side by side

  Renata Renay
Total US births 14,6161,960
Most in one year 72676
Babies in 2025 635under 5
Estimated living today 14,0001,700
Median age today 1158
Peak year 19801960
Best rank 336th girls1,253rd girls
Rank in 2025 481stunranked
First recorded 19001936
Girls / boys 14,610 / 61,936 / 24

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 Renays alive today are over 58; half the Renatas are over 11. That is 47 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 Renata Renay
England and Wales 20688

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: Renata and Renay.