Ruben

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Ruben boys named Ruben

By the numbers

Total US births

117,207

Estimated living today

93,000

Median age today

37

Peak year

1992

Best rank

178th

Rank in 2025

480th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

655 / 116,552

How old the living Rubens are

born that year still alive today

Of the 117,207 babies given the name since 1880, about 93,000 are alive — 79 in every hundred. Roughly 15,000 of them are children and 13,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1988 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 Hebrew

From Hebrew רְאוּבֵן.

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

Notable Rubens

• Rubén Darío porno (1867–1916)Nicaraguan poet, journalist, writer, and diplomat (1867-1916)1011
• Rúben Dias (born 1997)Portuguese footballer
• Ruben Amorim (born 1985)Portuguese professional football manager and former player
• Ruben Östlund (born 1974)Swedish film director and screenwriter
• Ruben Loftus-Cheek (born 1996)English association football player
• Rúben Neves (born 1997)Portuguese footballer
• Ruben Vargas (born 1998)Swiss association football player
• Rubén Baraja (born 1975)Spanish footballer

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

Where Ruben is most common

• CA35,308
• TX34,523
• NY5,684
• AZ5,381
• IL4,133
• FL2,899
• NM2,691
• CO1,765
• MI1,366
• GA1,355

Relative to how many babies each state records, Ruben is most concentrated in New Mexico (4.5×), Texas (4.0×), Arizona (3.9×), California (3.1×).

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

Names of 1992

The most popular boys’ names the year Ruben peaked:

• Michael
• Christopher
• Matthew
• Joshua
• Andrew
• Brandon

All the names of 1992

Ruben 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.

Ruben: 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, Ruben is most concentrated in Neuchâtel, where 0.19% of children were given it – 67 of them.

Ruben: rank by region

In 2025, Ruben was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.

In 2020, Ruben was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

In 2025, Ruben was given 2 times or more in 2 regions of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Ruben appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (225th).

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.

Ruben by city

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

Ruben 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 Ruben lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 131,134 men called Ruben 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 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Ruby
• Rubi
• Rubin
• Rubye
• Rubie
• Rubbie
• Rubina
• Rube
• Ruba

Ruben against another name

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

• Ruben vs Ruby
• Ruben vs Rubi
• Ruben vs Rubin
• Ruben vs Rubye
• Ruben vs Rubie
• Ruben vs Rubbie

Compare Ruben with a name of your own