Humanverse

Rika vs Riki

American parents have registered 1,626 Rikis since 1880, against 555 Rikas. Riki is still ahead, with 9 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Rika Riki

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 81 years in which either name was published, Riki for 75 years and Rika for 6 years. The lead changed hands 10 times.

Side by side

  Rika Riki
Total US births 5551,626
Most in one year 3454
Babies in 2025 under 59
Estimated living today 5401,500
Median age today 3438
Peak year 19911981
Best rank 3,207th girls2,195th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked10,107th
First recorded 19591945
Girls / boys 555 / 01,193 / 433

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 Rikis alive today are over 38; half the Rikas are over 34. That is 4 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 Rika Riki
England and Wales 938

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: Rika and Riki.