girls:
16.8k births since 1988
#1150 (80th percentile)
boys:
33.3k births since 1971
#620 (86th percentile)
overall:
50.1k births since 1971
#1073 (86th percentile)
The name River is the #1,073 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 50,123 recorded births since 1971. This represents the 86.1% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 86.1% of all names). For boys, it ranks #620 (86.5% percentile) for all time with 33,314 births since 1971. For girls, it ranks #1,150 (79.9% percentile) for all time with 16,809 births since 1988.
River first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1971 (1971 for boys and 1988 for girls). Birth data for River is available in 44 out of the 53 years between 1971 and 2023 (44 years for boys and 35 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 River has been given to both genders, with a slight preference for boys (66.5% of all recorded births). In 2023, 66.2% of babies named River were boys.
For boys, River reached its peak popularity in 2022, achieving the 89.1% percentile (ranked #102) with 1,864 births per million. The name was most common in 2021, with 1,866 births per million (ranked 88.4% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2003, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, River ranks #113 for boys (87.7% percentile) with 1,684 births per million, which is 90.3% of its peak share of births.
For girls, River reached its peak popularity in 2021, achieving the 84.9% percentile (ranked #142) with 1,052 births per million. The name was most common in 2022, with 1,072 births per million (ranked 84.6% percentile). Over the past 5 years, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, River ranks #185 for girls (80.5% percentile) with 902 births per million, which is 84.1% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "River".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of River.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "River", 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 River.
Our model found one way to pronounce the name River. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 100.0% confident that River is pronounced as RIH-ver, which has 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 River? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with River. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for River, 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 IH1 V ER0) 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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