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Riccardo vs Richard

American parents have registered 2,587,082 Richards since 1880, against 1,576 Riccardos. Richard is still ahead, with 1,505 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Riccardo against Richard, 1880 to 2025 0 15k 30k 45k 60k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Riccardo Richard

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

Richard 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 2025, when Riccardo had 16 and Richard had 1,505.

Side by side

  Riccardo Richard
Total US births 1,5762,587,082
Most in one year 3758,990
Babies in 2025 161,505
Estimated living today 1,4001.4 million
Median age today 4263
Peak year 19791946
Best rank 1,570th boys5th boys
Rank in 2025 5,608th234th
First recorded 19131880
Girls / boys 0 / 1,5769,530 / 2,577,552

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 Richards alive today are over 63; half the Riccardos are over 42. That is 21 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 Riccardo Richard
Italy 121,575721
France 36584,200
Ireland 1911,345
England and Wales 4068,657
Scotland 558,397
Switzerland 760311
Belgium 142466
Poland 146125

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: Riccardo and Richard.