Raiden
Masculine · Japanese roots · “thunder and lightning”
Raiden is given to both — 12,681 boys and 460 girls since 1880. See other names given to both
Raiden is the Japanese word for thunder and lightning, written with two characters that literally stack the crash on top of the flash. It arrived in American use through popular culture rather than migration, and it has held its ground since — two clean syllables that most people spell right the first time they hear it.
How old is the name Raiden?
Raiden first appears in US birth records in 1993 — 32 years ago. The typical Raiden is a kid of about 8 — this name's wave is very recent. About 12,500 people named Raiden are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Raiden most popular?
Raiden peaked in 2022, reaching #353 nationally. Today it ranks #432, 79 places below that high. See the whole 2022 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From 雷電 (Japanese, thunder and lightning) to Raiden
The story of Raiden
In Japanese, raiden is an ordinary noun before it is ever a name — the sound and the flash together. It has long been used as a ring name rather than a birth name: an eighteenth-century sumo champion fought under it, and the word carries that combative weight in Japan still. Its life as a given name in the United States began with the fighting-game boom of the early 1990s, when Mortal Kombat put a thunder god called Raiden on arcade screens, and it was reinforced a decade later by the character Raiden in Metal Gear Solid 2. So this is a genuinely Japanese word that became an American given name by a route almost no other Japanese word has taken.
Meaning
thunder and lightning
From Japanese 雷電: 雷 rai, thunder, and 電 den, lightning or electricity. The same thunder character sits in Raijin, the thunder deity of Japanese folk religion.
How the name formed
- 雷電Japanese, thunder and lightning
- Raidenromanized Japanese, used as a ring name
- RaidenEnglish given name
Related forms: 雷電 · Rayden · Raidyn · Raeden
Pronouncing Raiden
RAY-den
RAY-den is the standard American pronunciation. Japanese puts the two vowels of rai together so it lands closer to RYE-den; both are heard, and families usually settle on one early.
Nicknames for Raiden
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1993
- Most boys named
- 2022935 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #353reached in 2022
- Change vs 2024
- +4.8%739 in 2025, from 705
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Raiden in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- 雷電 in Japanese — transliteration
- Rayden in English — spelling variant
- Raidyn in English — spelling variant
- Raeden in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, Florida.
Raidens among us
people named Raiden are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 2,311 born in 2025 was named Raiden
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Raiden
- #432
- Raiden on the 2025 chart
- #317
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Raiden went to 739 boys in 2025, but Rayden is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 1,036, which makes it the 317th most-given boys’ name of the year — 115 places above the chart.
- Raiden739
- Rayden297
About 1 boy in 1,649 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 2,311 for Raiden itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Keaton test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Raiden's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Keaton climbed just as high around 2000, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Keaton's path sketches the road Raiden is walking now.
Raiden sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Raiden is headed
Raiden should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
High confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Raiden beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Raiden in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- A meaning that needs no explanation — thunder and lightning, straight from the Japanese word, with nothing contested about it.
- Two syllables, six letters, and a stress pattern English speakers hit correctly on first sight.
- Ray is a ready-made short form that already works as a full name on its own.
- Reads the same in Japanese romanization and in English, so it travels without being rewritten.
- The route into American use runs through video games, and some people will place it there immediately. That association has faded as the name has spread, but it is the first thing a certain generation will say.
- Rayden, Raidyn and Raeden all exist alongside this spelling, so expect to confirm which one you mean when someone writes it down.
- It is a Japanese word carried by mostly non-Japanese families in the US, which is worth thinking through if the connection matters to you either way.
- The wave behind it is recent, so a child with this name is likely to be the only one in the room — welcome to some, wearying to others.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Raiden
Masculine · Japanese roots · #432 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Raidens are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 12,500 people named Raiden are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Raiden?
- Raiden is the most-used spelling in US records — 739 of the 1,036 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Rayden.
- How popular is the name Raiden in 2025?
- Raiden ranks #432 among US boy names in 2025, with 739 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Raiden?
- About 1 in every 2,311 US boys born in 2025 was named Raiden — 739 in all.
- Will my child share the name Raiden with classmates?
- Raiden will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Raiden
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Lewis#433 · Travis#434 · Moshe#435 · Nehemiah#429 · Wilder#429 · Frederick#435 · Pablo#429 · Lian#428
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Raiden? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Raiden and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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