Ruby
About 379,684 American babies have been named Ruby since 1880, most of them around 1924. In 2025 it ranked 64th. About 156,000 Rubys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 27.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Ruby boys named Ruby
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 379,684
- Estimated living today
- 156,000
- Median age today
- 27
- Peak year
- 1924
- Best rank
- 26th
- Rank in 2025
- 64th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 376,570 / 3,114
How old the living Rubys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 379,684 babies given the name since 1880, about 156,000 are alive — 41 in every hundred. Roughly 60,000 of them are children and 49,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1998 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
The female name derives from ruby in the 19th century. The programming language was named after the gemstone.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Rubys
- Ruby Rose (born 1986)Australian actor, model, DJ, and recording artist
- Ruby Dee (1922–2014)American actress
- Ruby Lin (born 1976)Taiwanese actress, singer and producer
- Ruby Payne-Scott (1912–1981)Australian radio astronomer
- Ruby Bridges (born 1954)American civil rights activist
- Ruby Keeler (1910–1993)American actress, dancer, and singer
- Ruby Myers (1907–1983)Indian actress
- Ruby (born 1981)Egyptian singer, actress and model
People named Ruby with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Ruby is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Ruby is most concentrated in Arkansas (3.3×), Mississippi (3.2×), Alabama (2.6×), Kentucky (2.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1924
The most popular girls’ names the year Ruby peaked:
Ruby elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Ruby | 61,553 | 1st |
| New Zealand girls | Ruby | 5,233 | 1st |
| Ireland girls | Ruby | 4,637 | 17th |
| Scotland girls | Ruby | 3,659 | 26th |
| France girls | Ruby | 2,145 | 249th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Ruby | 1,812 | 18th |
| Belgium girls | Ruby | 388 | 294th |
| Switzerland girls | Ruby | 343 | 228th |
| Poland girls | Ruby | 50 birth registrations | 340th |
| Norway girls | Ruby | 28 | 302nd |
| France boys | Ruby | 10 | 6,415th |
| England and Wales boys | Ruby | 3 | 4,333rd |
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.
Ruby: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Ruby | 295 | 0.024% | 172nd |
| French girls | Switzerland | Ruby | 44 | 0.010% | 266th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Ruby | 4 | 0.006% | 192nd |
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, Ruby is most concentrated in Lucerne, where 0.03% of children were given it – 28 of them.
Ruby: rank by region
In 2025, Ruby was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Ruby | 238 | 23 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Ruby appears in the lists for Province of West Flanders (160th), Province of East Flanders (214th) and Province of Antwerp (276th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 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.
Ruby by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 204 | 80th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Ruby 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Ruby | 1,843 | 2,207 |
| Finland girls | Ruby | 62 | 98 |
| the Netherlands boys | Ruby | 52 | 66 |
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 Ruby lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 357 women called Ruby were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alicante/Alacant | Ruby | 30 | 0.029 | 1,904 |
| Castellón/Castelló | Ruby | 7 | 0.022 | 2,111 |
| Balears, Illes | Ruby | 14 | 0.022 | 2,285 |
| Almería | Ruby | 8 | 0.021 | 2,231 |
| Palmas, Las | Ruby | 12 | 0.020 | 3,267 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Ruby | 11 | 0.020 | 3,086 |
Listed in 20 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 32 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
Ruby 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.