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Rhian vs Rhiannon

American parents have registered 15,544 Rhiannons since 1880, against 1,015 Rhians. Rhiannon is still ahead, with 210 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Rhian Rhiannon

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

Rhiannon has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1974 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2015, when Rhian had 35 and Rhiannon had 120.

Side by side

  Rhian Rhiannon
Total US births 1,01515,544
Most in one year 64651
Babies in 2025 under 5210
Estimated living today 1,00015,000
Median age today 1827
Peak year 20071999
Best rank 2,992nd girls424th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked1,119th
First recorded 19771974
Girls / boys 889 / 12615,539 / 5

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 Rhiannons alive today are over 27; half the Rhians are over 18. That is 9 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 Rhian Rhiannon
England and Wales 1,6946,202
Scotland 230873
Northern Ireland 18212
Ireland 64147

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: Rhian and Rhiannon.