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Ricardo vs Richardson

American parents have registered 147,169 Ricardos since 1880, against 669 Richardsons. Ricardo is still ahead, with 833 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ricardo against Richardson, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ricardo Richardson

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

Ricardo has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1888 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1919, when Ricardo had 61 and Richardson had 8.

Side by side

  Ricardo Richardson
Total US births 147,169669
Most in one year 3,05516
Babies in 2025 83310
Estimated living today 132,000560
Median age today 3227
Peak year 19982000
Best rank 125th boys4,573rd boys
Rank in 2025 380th7,679th
First recorded 18881919
Girls / boys 713 / 146,4560 / 669

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 Ricardos alive today are over 32; half the Richardsons are over 27. That is 5 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 Ricardo Richardson
France 3,570100

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: Ricardo and Richardson.