Reilly
About 10,088 American babies have been named Reilly since 1953, most of them around 1998. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 2,822nd. About 9,900 Reillys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 21.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Reilly boys named Reilly
Girls and boys called Reilly
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Reilly crossed from boys to girls in 1996, and has stayed there for 11 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 70% girls, and in 2025 it was 56%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 41 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
- 10,088
- Estimated living today
- 9,900
- Median age today
- 21
- Peak year
- 1998
- Best rank
- 623rd
- Rank in 2025
- 2,822nd
- First recorded
- 1953
- Girls / boys
- 5,528 / 4,560
How old the living Reillys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 10,088 babies given the name since 1953, about 9,900 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 3,500 of them are children and 9 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 Irish Ó Raghallaigh, a surname meaning "descendants of Raghallach".
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Reillys
- Edward Reilly Stettinius, Jr. (1900–1949)American diplomat, ran Lend Lease
- Reilly Opelka (born 1997)American tennis player
- Reilly Smith (born 1991)Canadian ice hockey player
People named Reilly with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Reilly is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Reilly is most concentrated in Washington (2.2×), New Jersey (2.0×), Pennsylvania (1.8×), Connecticut (1.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1998
The most popular girls’ names the year Reilly peaked:
Reilly elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Reilly | 717 | 569th |
| Scotland boys | Reilly | 153 | 235th |
| England and Wales girls | Reilly | 48 | 3,899th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Reilly | 24 | 291st |
| Ireland boys | Reilly | 10 | 635th |
| Scotland girls | Reilly | 3 | 808th |
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.
Related names
Reilly 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.