Rupert
Rupert reached its high-water mark in 1920 at number 487, and has been recorded 5,611 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 3,757th. About 1,900 Ruperts are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 56.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Rupert boys named Rupert
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 5,611
- Estimated living today
- 1,900
- Median age today
- 56
- Peak year
- 1920
- Best rank
- 487th
- Rank in 2025
- 3,757th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 16 / 5,595
How old the living Ruperts are
born that year still alive today
Of the 5,611 babies given the name since 1880, about 1,900 are alive — 33 in every hundred. Roughly 330 of them are children and 710 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1969 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
A German name, brought to England by Prince Rupert of the Rhine in the seventeenth century. The geometry sense is also a reference to Prince Rupert, who posed the question of whether a cube could be passed through a hole made in another cube of the same size.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Ruperts
- Rupert Murdoch (born 1931)American businessman
- Rupert Grint (born 1988)English actor
- Rupert Everett (born 1959)British actor
- Rupert Brooke (1887–1915)English poet
- Rupert (1352–1410)King of Germany and Elector Palatine
- Rupert Friend (born 1981)British actor
- Rupert Graves (born 1963)English film, television, and theatre actor
- Rupert Sheldrake (born 1942)English biochemist, author and parapsychological researcher (*1942)
People named Rupert with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Rupert is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Rupert is most concentrated in North Carolina (7.0×), South Carolina (2.9×), New York (2.4×), Georgia (2.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1920
The most popular boys’ names the year Rupert peaked:
Rupert elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Rupert | 8,156 | 84th |
| Scotland boys | Rupert | 108 | 271st |
| France boys | Rupert | 40 | 990th |
| Ireland boys | Rupert | 33 | 280th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Rupert | 13 | 272nd |
| Poland boys | Rupert | 9 birth registrations | 492nd |
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.
Rupert: rank by region
In 2024, Rupert was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Podkarpackie | Rupert | 161 | 2 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – 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.
Rupert by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 4 | 578th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Rupert 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 | Rupert | 13 | 25 |
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
Rupert 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.