Girl Names That Start With R
Girls' names beginning with R, ranked by how many babies actually got them — not by editorial preference — plus which ones are climbing and how the letter itself has moved.
- Share of girls, 2025
- 4.4%
- vs 3.1% in 2000
- Names in use
- 872
- 3,168 recorded since 1880
- Letter peaked
- 1919
- at 6.0% of names
- Rank among 26 letters
- #8
- by 2025 share
How R has fared since 1880
Share of all listed U.S. births given a name starting with R, year by year. Plotted as a share rather than a count — raw counts track how many babies were born, so every letter would appear to peak in 1957.
| Save name | Name & meaning | History 1926–2025, yearly counts; individually scaled | Babies 2025 · rank | 5-year rank movement | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,781#173 | Up 46 rank positions in five years | 1920 | |||
| 872#350 | Down 101 rank positions in five years | 1981 | |||
| 1,225#250 | Down 24 rank positions in five years | 1985 | |||
| 2,386#114 | Down 2 rank positions in five years | 1917 | |||
| 3,554#64 | Up 10 rank positions in five years | 1924 | |||
| 400#704 | Up 197 rank positions in five years | 1961 | |||
| 786#395 | Up 37 rank positions in five years | 1962 | |||
| 441#653 | Down 22 rank positions in five years | 1925 | |||
| 1,222#251 | Up 191 rank positions in five years | 1947 | |||
| 4,441#48 | Down 15 rank positions in five years | 2016 | |||
| 1,088#283 | Up 188 rank positions in five years | 1927 | |||
| 1,797#171 | Up 27 rank positions in five years | 1938 | |||
| 302#884 | Down 111 rank positions in five years | 1996 | |||
| 373#733 | Up 71 rank positions in five years | 1928 | |||
| 2,118#137 | Down 35 rank positions in five years | 2010 | |||
| 1,244#248 | Down 134 rank positions in five years | 2016 | |||
| 771#404 | Up 13 rank positions in five years | 1993 | |||
| 1,631#192 | Down 46 rank positions in five years | 2012 | |||
| 891#344 | Down 185 rank positions in five years | 2019 | |||
| 2,326#116 | Down 12 rank positions in five years | 2022 | |||
| 393#715 | Down 264 rank positions in five years | 2018 | |||
| 589#506 | Down 246 rank positions in five years | 2019 | |||
| 644#478 | Down 125 rank positions in five years | 2008 | |||
| 2,023#145 | Down 20 rank positions in five years | 2022 | |||
| 349#781 | Up 473 rank positions in five years | 1927 | |||
| 1,240#249 | Up 6 rank positions in five years | 2018 | |||
| 452#639 | Down 14 rank positions in five years | 2023 | |||
| 1,401#220 | Down 36 rank positions in five years | 2022 | |||
| 493#594 | Down 4 rank positions in five years | 2024 | |||
| 592#502 | Down 131 rank positions in five years | 2016 | |||
| 635#481 | Up 27 rank positions in five years | 1980 | |||
| 510#582 | Up 9 rank positions in five years | 2024 | |||
| 1,332#230 | Up 228 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 342#796 | Down 90 rank positions in five years | 2019 | |||
| 270#954 | Down 166 rank positions in five years | 2020 | |||
| 287#916 | Down 104 rank positions in five years | 2011 | |||
| 481#609 | Up 129 rank positions in five years | 2023 | |||
| 580#513 | Down 152 rank positions in five years | 2021 | |||
| 464#629 | Up 152 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 390#721 | Down 225 rank positions in five years | 2020 | |||
| 293#906 | Down 138 rank positions in five years | 2019 | |||
| 831#369 | Up 564 rank positions in five years | 2023 | |||
| 682#452 | Down 95 rank positions in five years | 2021 | |||
| 569#531 | Up 137 rank positions in five years | 2024 | |||
| 347#782 | Down 390 rank positions in five years | 2019 | |||
| 417#681 | Up 366 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 407#699 | Up 494 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 407#698 | Up 809 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 333#818 | Up 1,258 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 359#755 | Up 2,421 rank positions in five years | 2025 |
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R names climbing fastest
Biggest R names of all time
By total applications since 1880 — a different list from the one above, because it counts every generation, not just this one.
Every other letter
Sources & methodology
Rankings and counts come from official birth card-application data, 1880–2025. Counts are card applications rather than births, and any name given to fewer than 5 babies of one sex in a year is not published — so “—” means genuinely uncommon, never invalid. The “climbing fastest” row ranks by five-year rank movement as a ratio, and a name must be inside the top 1,000 with at least 200 applications in 2025 to qualify — a looser gate than the site-wide trending list uses, because inside a single letter the stricter one leaves some letters empty. Letter shares are measured over listed names only, and the 25-year comparison is a generation rather than five years because letter fashion moves far more slowly than any one name.