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Ronel vs Ronnie

American parents have registered 191,119 Ronnies since 1880, against 558 Ronels. Ronnie is still ahead, with 317 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Ronel 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 1922, when Ronel had 5 and Ronnie had 61.

Side by side

  Ronel Ronnie
Total US births 558191,119
Most in one year 166,382
Babies in 2025 7317
Estimated living today 510133,000
Median age today 2763
Peak year 19951947
Best rank 3,854th boys61st boys
Rank in 2025 9,714th1,064th
First recorded 19221902
Girls / boys 6 / 5528,193 / 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.

Which name is older

Half of the Ronnies alive today are over 63; half the Ronels are over 27. That is 36 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Ronel Ronnie
England and Wales 5418,678
France 45245

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: Ronel and Ronnie.