boys:
2.9k births since 1882
#2318 (49th percentile)
overall:
2.9k births since 1882
#4997 (35th percentile)
The name Rudolf is the #4,997 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 2,944 recorded births since 1882. This represents the 35.4% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 35.4% of all names). For boys, it ranks #2,318 (49.4% percentile) for all time with 2,944 births since 1882.
Rudolf first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1882 (first recorded for boys in 1882). Birth data for Rudolf is available in 122 out of the 142 years between 1882 and 2023. 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.
For boys, Rudolf reached its peak popularity in 1927, achieving the 14.3% percentile (ranked #462) with 71 births per million. The name was most common in 1909, with 79 births per million (ranked 3.4% percentile). Since reaching a high point around 2020, the popularity of this name for boys has been declining. Currently, Rudolf ranks #910 for boys (0.1% percentile) with 3 births per million, which is 4.1% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Rudolf".
These names exclude other spelling variations of Rudolph. View all variations of Rudolph.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Rudolf", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. This list excludes the 5 other name spellings that we've determined are also variations of "Rudolph" based on shared pronunciations. Click here for more details on names that are pronounced like Rudolph..
Our model has identified 5 different pronunciations for the name Rudolf. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 38.8% confident that Rudolf is pronounced as RUE-dahlf, which has 2 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is RUE-dawlf, at 35.8% 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 Rudolf? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Rudolf. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Rudolf, 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 UW1 D AA0 L F) 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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