Rufus
Rufus is a boy's name that peaked in 1922, when it was the 188th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 3,949th. About 12,000 Rufuses are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 65.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Rufus boys named Rufus
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 36,225
- Estimated living today
- 12,000
- Median age today
- 65
- Peak year
- 1922
- Best rank
- 188th
- Rank in 2025
- 3,949th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 151 / 36,074
How old the living Rufuses are
born that year still alive today
Of the 36,225 babies given the name since 1880, about 12,000 are alive — 32 in every hundred. Roughly 540 of them are children and 5,900 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1960 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 Latin
From Latin rūfus (“red”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Rufuss
- Rufus Wainwright (born 1973)American-Canadian singer-songwriter and composer
- Rufus Sewell (born 1967)English actor
- Rufus King (1755–1827)American Founding Father
- Rufus Wilmot Griswold (1815–1857)American editor, literary critic, anthologist, and writer
- Rufus Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading (1860–1935)British politician
- Rufus Thomas (1917–2001)American singer
- Rufus of Ephesus (100–200)late 1st and early 2nd century Greek physician
- Rufus (born 1942)French actor and comedian
People named Rufus with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Rufus is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Rufus is most concentrated in South Carolina (5.5×), Mississippi (5.3×), Georgia (5.3×), Alabama (4.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1922
The most popular boys’ names the year Rufus peaked:
Rufus elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Rufus | 3,758 | 236th |
| Scotland boys | Rufus | 58 | 401st |
| France boys | Rufus | 15 | 6,444th |
| Belgium boys | Rufus | 5 | 1,363rd |
| Ireland boys | Rufus | 3 | 711th |
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.
Rufus by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 13 | 326th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Rufus 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 boys | Rufus | 167 | 242 |
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
Rufus 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.