girls:
43.3k births since 1941
#642 (89th percentile)
boys:
3.2k births since 1921
#2192 (52nd percentile)
overall:
46.6k births since 1921
#1128 (85th percentile)
The name Raven is the #1,128 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 46,552 recorded births since 1921. This represents the 85.4% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 85.4% of all names). For girls, it ranks #642 (88.8% percentile) for all time with 43,309 births since 1941. For boys, it ranks #2,192 (52.2% percentile) for all time with 3,243 births since 1921.
Raven first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1921 (1921 for boys and 1941 for girls). Birth data for Raven is available in 84 out of the 103 years between 1921 and 2023 (81 years for boys and 80 years for girls). The Social Security Administration only reports birth data for years in which the name was given to at least five children of the same gender.
The name Raven has been given almost exclusively to girls, with 93.0% of all recorded births being female. Interestingly, until around 1941, the name was more popular for boys (100.0% boys from 1921 to 1940), but since then it has been more commonly used for girls (93.1% girls from 1941 to 2023).
For girls, Raven reached its peak popularity in 1993, achieving the 84.3% percentile (ranked #137) with 1,159 births per million. The name was most common in 1993, with 1,159 births per million (ranked 84.3% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2012, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Raven ranks #338 for girls (64.4% percentile) with 481 births per million, which is 41.5% of its peak share of births.
For boys, Raven reached its peak popularity in 1999, achieving the 22.6% percentile (ranked #623) with 92 births per million. The name was most common in 1999, with 92 births per million (ranked 22.6% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2017, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Raven ranks #874 for boys (4.1% percentile) with 23 births per million, which is 24.9% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Raven".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Raven.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Raven", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Raven.
Our model has identified 2 different pronunciations for the name Raven. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 83.3% confident that Raven is pronounced as RAY-vuhn, which has 2 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is RAY-vihn, at 16.7% confidence, with 2 syllables.
If none of the pronunciations above sound right to you, could you please check whether any of these related pronunciations should be applied to the name Raven? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Raven. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Raven, please vote using the thumbs up button.
Our confidence scores estimate the likelihood that a particular pronunciation is the most correct for a given name spelling. These scores are derived from pronunciation dictionaries, manual verification, your feedback, and a fine-tuned large language model trained to generate name pronunciations.
For any given spelling, confidence scores across all identified pronunciations sum to 100%. However, these scores don't account for the possibility of valid pronunciations that our model hasn't identified.
The raw pronunciations shown (like R EY1 V AH0 N) use the ARPAbet phoneme system, a standardized way to represent English speech sounds. Each symbol represents a distinct sound in American English. Visit the ARPAbet Wikipedia page to learn more about these phonetic symbols.
Pronunciation audio is generated by an open source text to speech model that has been customized to adhere to pronunciations provided in ARPAbet format, but sometimes pronunciations that differ subtly will sound identical, particularly if the only difference is the level of emphasis on a syllable or a single vowel sound.
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