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Ripley

About 3,590 American babies have been named Ripley since 1918, most of them around 2025. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 1,029th. About 3,500 Ripleys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 5.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 80 160 240 320 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Ripley boys named Ripley

Girls and boys called Ripley

Share of the name given to girls, 1880 to 2025 0% 25% 50% 75% 100% 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 2,555 girls and 1,035 boys in all, and in 2025 the split was 243 to 156.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 23 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
3,590
Estimated living today
3,500
Median age today
5
Peak year
2025
Best rank
1,029th
Rank in 2025
1,029th
First recorded
1918
Girls / boys
2,555 / 1,035

How old the living Ripleys are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 100 200 300 400 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 3,590 babies given the name since 1918, about 3,500 are alive — 98 in every hundred. Roughly 3,100 of them are children and 30 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2020 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 the Old English folk name for the Anglian tribe, *Hrype + Old English lēah (“woodland clearing”).

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

Where Ripley is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Ripley is most concentrated in Oregon (4.1×), Washington (3.3×), Florida (2.5×), Colorado (2.3×).

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

Names of 2025

The most popular girls’ names the year Ripley peaked:

All the names of 2025

Ripley elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
England and Wales girls Ripley 251 1,490th
England and Wales boys Ripley 103 1,951st
France girls Ripley 5 4,552nd
Scotland girls Ripley 3 780th

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.

Ripley 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 girls Ripley 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

Ripley against another name

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

Compare Ripley with a name of your own

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.