Ramsey
The boy's name Ramsey has been in the national records since 1894, with 8,861 births to its name. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 1,959th. About 8,200 Ramseys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 21.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Ramsey boys named Ramsey
Girls and boys called Ramsey
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 2,259 girls and 6,602 boys in all, and in 2025 the split was 76 to 78.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 65 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 8,861
- Estimated living today
- 8,200
- Median age today
- 21
- Peak year
- 2017
- Best rank
- 1,207th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,959th
- First recorded
- 1894
- Girls / boys
- 2,259 / 6,602
How old the living Ramseys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 8,861 babies given the name since 1894, about 8,200 are alive — 92 in every hundred. Roughly 3,500 of them are children and 230 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2004 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin a surname
From Old English hramsa (“wild garlic”) + īeġ (“island”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Ramseys
- Ramsey Clark (1927–2021)American lawyer and peace activist
- Ramsey Campbell (born 1946)English author
- Ramsey Nouah (born 1970)Nigerian actor
- Ramsey Lewis (1935–2022)American jazz composer
- Ramsey Angela (born 1999)Dutch athlete
People named Ramsey with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Ramsey is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Ramsey is most concentrated in Texas (3.5×), Georgia (2.5×), California (2.3×), Florida (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2017
The most popular boys’ names the year Ramsey peaked:
Ramsey elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Ramsey | 229 | 1,398th |
| Scotland boys | Ramsey | 12 | 669th |
| France boys | Ramsey | 5 | 5,540th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Ramsey among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Ramsey | — | 5 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Ramsey against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.