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Ruslan vs Russell

American parents have registered 361,476 Russells since 1880, against 622 Ruslans. Russell is still ahead, with 944 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Ruslan Russell

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

Russell 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 2018, when Ruslan had 29 and Russell had 769.

Side by side

  Ruslan Russell
Total US births 622361,476
Most in one year 327,510
Babies in 2025 32944
Estimated living today 620207,000
Median age today 1258
Peak year 20251960
Best rank 3,513th boys56th boys
Rank in 2025 3,513th345th
First recorded 19921880
Girls / boys 0 / 6221,696 / 359,780

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 Russells alive today are over 58; half the Ruslans are over 12. That is 46 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 Ruslan Russell
England and Wales 621,213
Ireland 3225
France 70100

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: Ruslan and Russell.