Boy Names Starting With R

Ranks are each name's overall position among all 2025 boy names, so the gaps between rows are real — the names in between simply start with other letters. Want a random shortlist instead? Spin R boy names in the generator, or browse the full top 100 boy names.

How common R names are

Measured by births, R is the 8th initial of 26 for boys in 2025: its 63 names inside the top 1,000 add up to 4.6% of that list's births. At the top, Roman ranks #42 among all 2025 boy names with 6,162 births; at the bottom, the 50th name, Reign, ranks #772 with 333.

That 4.6% is R's births inside the 2025 top 1,000 divided by the births of all 1,000 names — the convention the reading ranks and counts guide walks through — and the 63-name count is taken at that same depth, not at the 50-name depth of the table above.

R names across the decades

Between 1955 and 2015 the number of R boy names in the top 200 went from 21 to 7, with a high of 21 in 1955 and a low of 6 in 2005. Robert (#4) led the letter in 1955; Ryan (#39) led it in 2015. Cut to the same top-200 depth, the 2025 list holds 9 R names, led by Roman at #42. 2 different names hold the lead across those snapshots: Robert and Ryan. 2 of the 50 names on the 2025 table appear in every one of the 7 snapshot top-200 lists: Robert and Richard.

R names held 14.6% of the top-200 births for boys in 1955 and 2.7% in 2015; at the same depth in 2025 the figure is 3.4%. The first-letter trends guide sets R's share beside the other 25 initials for every snapshot year from 1955 to 2015, for both sexes.

Faded and new

14 R boy names appear in at least one snapshot top 200 but not on the 2025 list of 50 above: Randy (1955–1985, best #30 in 1955), Rodney (1955–1985, best #33 in 1965), Roger (1955–1985, best #37 in 1955), Ricky (1955–1985, best #46 in 1955), Randall (1955–1985, best #53 in 1955), Reginald (1955–1985, best #128 in 1965), Ross (1985, best #147 in 1985), Ralph (1955–1975, best #67 in 1955), Ronnie (1955–1975, best #80 in 1955), Rick (1955, 1965, best #109 in 1955), Ray (1955, 1965, best #113 in 1955), Rickey (1955, best #114 in 1955), Randolph (1955, best #162 in 1955), and Rex (1955, best #191 in 1955). The years in parentheses are the snapshot years whose top 200 included the name; 7 of them last charted in 1985.

34 newcomers run the other way — on the 2025 list, in no snapshot's top 200: the first 12 by rank are Rowan (#59), River (#111), Rhett (#188), Rory (#199), Ronan (#247), Reid (#293), Romeo (#302), Remington (#307), Raphael (#394), Remy (#408), Rhys (#412), and Rylan (#416), and the remaining 22 follow in the table above.

Both lists are bounded by the committed files — 200 ranks for each snapshot year and 50 R names for 2025, the last of them Reign at #772 — so "faded" means absent from this year's 50, not unregistered, and "new" means absent from a 200-deep snapshot, not absent from that year's file.

Shape of the list

1 of the 50 names on the 2025 list run to eight letters or more (Remington, for one), 11 stop at four or fewer (Ryan, for one), and the remaining 38 sit in the five-to-seven-letter middle (Roman, for one). The longest spelling on the 2025 list is Remington at 9 letters; the shortest, at 3, are Roy and Rio.

4 of the 50 names rank inside the 2025 top 100, 29 fall at ranks 101–500, 17 at 501–1,000, and none sit past #1,000, so every name on the list is inside the top-1,000 pool the generator's 2025 era draws from.

The 2025 girls' R list shares 10 spellings with this one — ranked separately for each sex — namely Rowan (#59 for boys, #249 for girls), Ryan (#99 for boys, #715 for girls), River (#111 for boys, #220 for girls), Rory (#199 for boys, #230 for girls), Riley (#208 for boys, #48 for girls), Remington (#307 for boys, #513 for girls), Remy (#408 for boys, #721 for girls), Reese (#603 for boys, #192 for girls), Robin (#705 for boys, #704 for girls), and Reign (#772 for boys, #452 for girls). After the R, the most common second letter on the 2025 list is o: 19 of the 50 names begin Ro-, followed by Re- (7); the list uses 7 different second letters in all.

R boy names: questions answered from the data

Other letters

Girl names for this letter: girl names starting with R.

Source: every name, rank, and count on this page comes from the U.S. Social Security Administration's national baby-names dataset (2025 data, from Social Security card applications). It is public-domain U.S. government data; names given fewer than 5 times in a year are excluded by the SSA, spelling variants are counted separately, and the data covers U.S. births only. Full caveats on the methodology page.