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Ron vs Ronnie

American parents have registered 191,119 Ronnies since 1880, against 36,432 Rons. Ronnie is still ahead, with 317 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ron against Ronnie, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ron Ronnie

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

Ronnie has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1902 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1963, when Ron had 1,597 and Ronnie had 3,916.

Side by side

  Ron Ronnie
Total US births 36,432191,119
Most in one year 1,8886,382
Babies in 2025 24317
Estimated living today 27,000133,000
Median age today 6263
Peak year 19601947
Best rank 170th boys61st boys
Rank in 2025 4,249th1,064th
First recorded 19191902
Girls / boys 70 / 36,3628,193 / 182,926

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.

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 Ron Ronnie
England and Wales 17218,678
France 285245
Scotland 3498
Ireland 481

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: Ron and Ronnie.