Primarily a girl's name · Unisex — 57% girls / 43% boys
Riley is a transferred use of an English surname derived from Old English ryge 'rye' + lēah 'wood, clearing'. It is also derived from the Irish surname O'Reilly, which originated from the Irish name Raghallach, of unknown meaning.
From Wikipedia
In Pythagorean numerology, every letter has a value from 1 to 9. Adding the letters of Riley yields these three numbers — a playful read on the name's character.
Riley's ten-year percentage change, -3%, makes the decline look almost flat, but that number hides a sharper real story: the count spiked to a peak of 7,159 in 2016, the same year the rank hit its best-ever #22, before falling to just 4,644 births and #42 by 2024 — a steep drop from the mid-decade high that the simple ten-year comparison mostly cancels out.
The name entered SSA data in 1923, decades before most of this batch's recent arrivals like Maverick or Eliana.
Its famous-bearer list runs almost entirely adult-entertainment and film — Riley Reid, Riley Keough, Riley Steele — alongside one unrelated historical figure, Vice President Thomas R. Marshall (whose middle name was Riley), an odd mix that doesn't map cleanly onto the name's current use for young children.
Why did you choose this name — or what does it mean to you? Approved stories appear on this page.
→ See names similar to Riley · Compare Riley with another name → · Popular names of the 2010s · Girls names starting with R
Rank is among all girls' names registered that year.
| Year | Babies | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| 1923 | 5 | #5,572 |
| 1929 | 6 | #4,483 |
| 1930 | 5 | #5,120 |
| 1937 | 6 | #4,174 |
| 1941 | 5 | #4,949 |
| 1942 | 5 | #5,233 |
| 1943 | 5 | #5,235 |
| 1947 | 6 | #5,175 |
| 1951 | 5 | #6,053 |
| 1952 | 7 | #4,834 |
| 1957 | 6 | #5,931 |
| 1965 | 6 | #6,354 |
| 1968 | 5 | #7,909 |
| 1973 | 7 | #7,241 |
| 1974 | 8 | #6,717 |
| 1975 | 11 | #5,417 |
| 1976 | 7 | #7,914 |
| 1977 | 10 | #6,224 |
| 1978 | 13 | #5,138 |
| 1979 | 16 | #4,566 |
| 1980 | 20 | #3,964 |
| 1981 | 25 | #3,409 |
| 1982 | 36 | #2,628 |
| 1983 | 37 | #2,506 |
| 1984 | 22 | #3,690 |
| 1985 | 64 | #1,779 |
| 1986 | 99 | #1,337 |
| 1987 | 88 | #1,482 |
| 1988 | 124 | #1,216 |
| 1989 | 169 | #1,016 |
| 1990 | 238 | #826 |
| 1991 | 286 | #727 |
| 1992 | 424 | #556 |
| 1993 | 553 | #453 |
| 1994 | 756 | #350 |
| 1995 | 969 | #287 |
| 1996 | 1,150 | #247 |
| 1997 | 1,669 | #184 |
| 1998 | 1,877 | #166 |
| 1999 | 2,312 | #138 |
| 2000 | 2,552 | #131 |
| 2001 | 3,044 | #106 |
| 2002 | 3,906 | #77 |
| 2003 | 4,243 | #72 |
| 2004 | 4,982 | #58 |
| 2005 | 5,127 | #54 |
| 2006 | 5,056 | #56 |
| 2007 | 5,212 | #52 |
| 2008 | 5,773 | #39 |
| 2009 | 5,636 | #38 |
| 2010 | 5,543 | #40 |
| 2011 | 5,043 | #47 |
| 2012 | 4,833 | #47 |
| 2013 | 4,941 | #45 |
| 2014 | 4,798 | #47 |
| 2015 | 5,738 | #35 |
| 2016 | 7,159 | #22 |
| 2017 | 6,366 | #25 |
| 2018 | 6,009 | #28 |
| 2019 | 5,710 | #30 |
| 2020 | 5,338 | #33 |
| 2021 | 5,219 | #37 |
| 2022 | 4,906 | #39 |
| 2023 | 4,637 | #43 |
| 2024 | 4,644 | #42 |
