Rayhan
Masculine · “Sweet basil”
Rayhan is given to both — 850 boys and 80 girls since 1880. See other names given to both
Rayḥān is sweet basil — the fragrant herb — and in the Qur'an it is one of the things promised in the garden. It is a name that smells of something, which is rarer than it sounds, and it is used from Morocco to Indonesia.
How old is the name Rayhan?
Rayhan first appears in US birth records in 1995 — 30 years ago. The typical Rayhan alive today was born around 2011, making them about 14 years old. About 800 people named Rayhan are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Rayhan most popular?
Rayhan peaked in 2011, reaching #2203 nationally. Today it ranks #5208, 3,005 places below that high. See the whole 2011 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From rayḥān to Rayhan
The story of Rayhan
Rayhan is old in Arabic as a word and long-established as a name, and it spread with Islam across Persia, Turkey, South and Southeast Asia; it is particularly common in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia today. Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, the eleventh-century Khwarezmian scholar who measured the earth's radius and wrote a landmark study of India, carried it in his kunya. American records show the name from the 1990s and its peak in 2011, arriving with Bangladeshi, Malay, Arab and Indonesian families and with the general growth of Muslim naming in the United States. Reyhan is also a common Turkish woman's name, and the spelling is shared.
Meaning
Sweet basil; fragrant herb
From Arabic rayḥān, an aromatic plant, most often identified with sweet basil, from the root r-w-ḥ that also gives rūḥ, spirit or breath, and rāʾiḥa, scent. The word appears in Surah 55 and Surah 56 among the pleasures of paradise, which gave it religious warmth. In Persian and Urdu it carries the same sense.
How the name formed
- rayḥān
- Rayhan
Related forms: ريحان · Reyhan · Reyhan · Raihan · রায়হান · ریحان
Pronouncing Rayhan
ray-HAHN
Two syllables, stress on the second. The ḥ is a pharyngeal, made deep in the throat, and English replaces it with an ordinary h. RAY-han with front stress is the usual American saying.
Nicknames for Rayhan
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
- 1995
- Most boys named
- 201159 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2203reached in 2011
- Change vs 2024
- −33.3%18 in 2025, from 27
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.
Rayhan in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- ريحان in Arabic — transliteration
- Reyhan in Persian — spelling variant
- Reyhan in Turkish — spelling variant
- Raihan in Indonesian — spelling variant
- রায়হান in Bengali — transliteration
- ریحان in Urdu — same name
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, New York.
Rayhans among us
people named Rayhan are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 94,893 born in 2025 was named Rayhan
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Rayhan
- #5208
- Rayhan on the 2025 chart
- #901
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Rayhan went to 18 boys in 2025, but Raihan is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 27, which makes it the 901st most-given boys’ name of the year — 4,307 places above the chart.
- Rayhan18
- Raihan9
About 1 boy in 63,262 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 94,893 for Rayhan 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 Avram test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Rayhan's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Avram climbed just as high around 1971, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Avram's path sketches the road Rayhan is walking now.
Rayhan 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
Rayhan beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Rayhan in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The meaning is settled, concrete and unusual — a fragrance rather than a virtue.
- Ray comes free as an English short form that needs no explanation.
- It is recognized across the Arab world, Turkey, Iran, South Asia and Southeast Asia.
- Rayhan, Raihan, Reyhan and Rehan are all in use and will be written for each other.
- Reyhan is a woman's name in Turkey, so the spelling is not sex-specific everywhere.
- The Arabic pharyngeal h is lost in English speech.
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What they receive
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Rayhan
Masculine · #5208 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Rayhans are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 800 people named Rayhan are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Rayhan?
- Rayhan is the most-used spelling in US records — 18 of the 27 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Raihan.
- How popular is the name Rayhan in 2025?
- Rayhan ranks #5208 among US boy names in 2025, with 18 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Rayhan?
- About 1 in every 94,893 US boys born in 2025 was named Rayhan — 18 in all.
- Will my child share the name Rayhan with classmates?
- Rayhan will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Rayhan
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Rodger#5208 · Eusebio#5208 · Boy#5208 · Randal#5208 · Gable#5208 · Jessy#5208 · Kelby#5208 · Jens#5208
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Rayhan? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Rayhan and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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