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Ryleigh vs Ryley

American parents have registered 35,576 Ryleighs since 1880, against 7,197 Ryleys. Ryleigh is still ahead, with 899 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ryleigh against Ryley, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ryleigh Ryley

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 45 years in which either name was published, Ryleigh for 26 years and Ryley for 19 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Ryleigh Ryley
Total US births 35,5767,197
Most in one year 2,041372
Babies in 2025 89967
Estimated living today 35,0007,100
Median age today 1119
Peak year 20192007
Best rank 138th girls1,021st boys
Rank in 2025 343rd3,848th
First recorded 19861981
Girls / boys 35,139 / 4373,341 / 3,856

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 Ryleys alive today are over 19; half the Ryleighs are over 11. That is 8 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 Ryleigh Ryley
England and Wales 7892,149
Scotland 82176
Ireland 8343
Northern Ireland 1842

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: Ryleigh and Ryley.