Richard

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Richard boys named Richard

By the numbers

Total US births

2,587,082

Estimated living today

1.4 million

Median age today

63

Peak year

1946

Best rank

5th

Rank in 2025

234th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

9,530 / 2,577,552

How old the living Richards are

born that year still alive today

Of the 2,587,082 babies given the name since 1880, about 1.4 million are alive — 56 in every hundred. Roughly 44,000 of them are children and 665,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1962 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 Germanic languages

From Middle English Rycharde, from Old French Richard, from Medieval Latin Richardus, Ricohardus, from Frankish *Rīkahard, from Proto-Germanic *Rīkaharduz, a construction. Cognate with Old High German Rīcohard. Partially related to rich.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Richards

• Richard Wagner (1813–1883)German composer
• Richard Nixon (1913–1994)president of the United States from 1969 to 1974
• Richard Feynman (1918–1988)American theoretical physicist
• Richard Dawkins (born 1941)English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author
• Richard I of England (1157–1199)King of England from 1189 to 1199
• Richard Strauss (1864–1949)German composer and orchestra director
• Richard Burton (1925–1984)Welsh actor
• Richard III of England (1452–1485)king of England from 1483 to 1485

People named Richard with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Richard is most common

• NY265,549
• CA226,556
• PA186,551
• OH157,231
• IL150,972
• MI119,617
• TX112,357
• MA109,804
• NJ89,718
• IN68,418

Relative to how many babies each state records, Richard is most concentrated in Vermont (1.8×), Maine (1.7×), Massachusetts (1.7×), Rhode Island (1.7×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1946

The most popular boys’ names the year Richard peaked:

• James
• Robert
• John
• William
• Richard
• David

All the names of 1946

Richard elsewhere

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.

Richard: births by region

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

By canton, Richard is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.03% of children were given it – 93 of them.

Richard: rank by region

In 2025, Richard was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.

In 2014, Richard was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

In 2024, Richard was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Richard appears in the lists for Province of West Flanders (178th) and Province of East Flanders (264th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.

Richard by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Richard 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.

A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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.

Where Richard lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 3,453 men called Richard were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Men: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 47 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 5 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Ricky
• Ricardo
• Rick
• Rickey
• Rickie
• Rico
• Richelle
• Richie
• Ricki
• Rich
• Richmond
• Richardo

Richard against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Richard vs Ricky
• Richard vs Ricardo
• Richard vs Rick
• Richard vs Rickey
• Richard vs Rickie
• Richard vs Rico

Compare Richard with a name of your own