girls:
132.8k births since 1923
#299 (95th percentile)
boys:
101.8k births since 1880
#304 (93rd percentile)
overall:
234.5k births since 1880
#341 (96th percentile)
The name Riley is the #341 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 234,542 recorded births since 1880. This represents the 95.6% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 95.6% of all names). For girls, it ranks #299 (94.8% percentile) for all time with 132,790 births since 1923. For boys, it ranks #304 (93.4% percentile) for all time with 101,752 births since 1880.
Riley has appeared in U.S. birth records since the beginning of our dataset in 1880 (since 1880 for boys and since 1923 for girls).
The name Riley has been given to both genders, with a slight preference for girls (56.6% of all recorded births). In 2023, 73.9% of babies named Riley were girls. Interestingly, until around 2005, the name was more popular for boys (63.7% boys from 1880 to 2004), but since then it has been more commonly used for girls (67.5% girls from 2005 to 2023).
For girls, Riley reached its peak popularity in 2016, achieving the 97.8% percentile (ranked #22) with 3,697 births per million. The name was most common in 2016, with 3,697 births per million (ranked 97.8% percentile). Since reaching a high point in 2020, the popularity of this name for girls has been declining. Currently, Riley ranks #41 for girls (95.8% percentile) with 2,639 births per million, which is 71.4% of its peak share of births.
For boys, Riley reached its peak popularity in 2006, achieving the 88.6% percentile (ranked #101) with 2,005 births per million. The name was most common in 2006, with 2,005 births per million (ranked 88.6% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2021, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Riley ranks #220 for boys (75.9% percentile) with 889 births per million, which is 44.3% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Riley".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Riley.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Riley", 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 Riley.
Our model has identified 2 different pronunciations for the name Riley. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 87.0% confident that Riley is pronounced as RAI-lee, which has 2 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is REE-lee, at 13.0% 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 Riley? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Riley. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Riley, 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 AY1 L IY0) 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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