Renay vs Rene

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Renay 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

Rene 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 1949, when Renay had 35 and Rene had 526.

Side by side

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 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

• Renay Michigan (4.9×), New York (3.6×), California (2.3×)
• Rene Texas (3.5×), Arizona (3.1×), Rhode Island (2.8×)

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.

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

• Renay vs Renee
• Renay vs Rena
• Renay vs Renata
• Renay vs Renae
• Renay vs Renita
• Rene vs Renee
• Rene vs Rena
• Rene vs Renata