Ruth
About 838,901 American babies have been named Ruth since 1880, most of them around 1920. In 2025 it ranked 173rd. About 221,000 Ruths are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 70.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Ruth boys named Ruth
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 838,901
- Estimated living today
- 221,000
- Median age today
- 70
- Peak year
- 1920
- Best rank
- 5th
- Rank in 2025
- 173rd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 836,122 / 2,779
How old the living Ruths are
born that year still alive today
Of the 838,901 babies given the name since 1880, about 221,000 are alive — 26 in every hundred. Roughly 22,000 of them are children and 134,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1955 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 Ruth the Moabite, Hebrew רות, of uncertain origin, possibly meaning "companion". Also associated with the English noun ruth (“compassion”) by Puritans.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Ruths
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933–2020)American lawyer and jurist
- Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)American anthropologist and folklorologist
- Ruth Gordon (1896–1985)American actress and writer
- Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1927–2013)German-born British-American author
- Ruth Rendell (1930–2015)British writer
- Ruth Handler (1916–2002)American businesswoman
- Ruth Negga (born 1981)Ethiopian-Irish actress
- Ruth Westheimer (1928–2024)German-American sex therapist
People named Ruth with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Ruth is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Ruth is most concentrated in West Virginia (1.9×), Vermont (1.7×), Pennsylvania (1.7×), North Dakota (1.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1920
The most popular girls’ names the year Ruth peaked:
Ruth elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland girls | Ruth | 6,220 | 44th |
| Norway girls | Ruth | 4,464 | 35th |
| England and Wales girls | Ruth | 4,191 | 120th |
| France girls | Ruth | 3,085 | 896th |
| Scotland girls | Ruth | 2,602 | 62nd |
| New Zealand girls | Ruth | 1,616 | 57th |
| Belgium girls | Ruth | 647 | 257th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Ruth | 279 | 75th |
| Switzerland girls | Ruth | 114 | 503rd |
| Poland girls | Ruth | 4 birth registrations | 729th |
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.
Ruth: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Ruth | 79 | 0.006% | 408th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Ruth | 35 | 0.008% | 449th |
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.
Ruth: rank by region
In 2025, Ruth was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Ruth | 450 | 11 |
In 2025, Ruth was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mazowieckie | Ruth | 326 | 2 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Ruth appears in the lists for Province of West Flanders (186th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, 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.
Ruth by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 42 | 259th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Ruth 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 | Ruth | 2,776 | 5,404 |
| Finland girls | Ruth | 613 | 963 |
| the Netherlands boys | Ruth | 390 | 594 |
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 Ruth lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 18,183 women called Ruth 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Valladolid | Ruth | 427 | 1.574 | 133 |
| Cantabria | Ruth | 451 | 1.473 | 138 |
| León | Ruth | 319 | 1.387 | 134 |
| Burgos | Ruth | 251 | 1.385 | 152 |
| Palencia | Ruth | 99 | 1.239 | 163 |
| Guadalajara | Ruth | 168 | 1.195 | 146 |
Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Ruth 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.