Raymond
Feminine · “counsel and protection”
Raymond is given to boys far more often — 779,794 boys against 3,517 girls since 1880. See Raymond as a boy name
Raymond is a Germanic compound that ended up sounding thoroughly French, and it carries one of the strangest careers in medieval Europe. A Raymond from Mallorca spent his life building a machine out of paper discs meant to generate every true statement it was possible to make.
How old is the name Raymond?
Raymond first appears in US birth records in 1896 — 129 years ago. The typical Raymond alive today was born around 1945, making them about 80 years old. About 1,900 people named Raymond are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Raymond most popular?
Raymond peaked in 1928, reaching #685 nationally. See the whole 1928 chart.
Where it comes from
From Raginmund to Raymond
The story of Raymond
Ramon Llull was a Mallorcan nobleman who abandoned court life in the thirteenth century, learned Arabic, and set out to prove Christianity to Muslim scholars by argument rather than force. To do it he built the Ars Magna: a set of concentric paper wheels lettered with basic concepts, which could be rotated to produce every possible combination of them. It was meant as a machine for finding truth, and it did not work, but Leibniz studied it four centuries later and people who write about the history of computing have been arguing about it ever since. Llull wrote some two hundred and fifty books, in Latin, Catalan and Arabic, and is one reason Catalan exists as a literary language at all.
Meaning
counsel and protection
The two Germanic halves are among the commonest in the whole name stock: the first appears in Reginald and Ronald, the second in Edmund and Sigmund. The compound reached English through Norman French rather than directly.
How the name formed
- Raginmund
- Raimund
- Raymond
Related forms: Ramon · Ramon · Raimondo · Raimund · Raimundo
Pronouncing Raymond
RAY-mund
Two syllables with the weight at the front. French says ray-MOHN with the final consonant silent, and Spanish rah-MOHN.
Nicknames for Raymond
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
- 1896
- Most girls named
- 192792 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #685reached in 1928
- Change vs 2002
- +20.0%6 in 2005, from 5
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.
Raymond in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Ramon in Spanish — same name
- Ramon in Catalan — same name
- Raimondo in Italian — same name
- Raimund in German — same name
- Raimundo in Portuguese — same name
Raymonds among us
people named Raymond are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Raymond sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- It has a form in every western European language and is recognized across all of them.
- Ray is one of the most established short forms in English and stands alone as a name.
- It has a documented history running from the Franks through medieval Spain to the present.
- Everyone can spell it and say it on first hearing.
- It is strongly associated with the first half of the twentieth century in America.
- One long-running sitcom title has attached itself for a whole generation.
- The spelling is recorded for a small number of girls, though it reads overwhelmingly as a boy's name.
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What they receive
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Raymond
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Raymonds are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,900 people named Raymond are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Raymond in 2025?
- Raymond is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Raymond with classmates?
- Raymond will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More R names
The most-given names starting with R, all years combined.
Ruth#173 · Rebecca#349 · Rachel#250 · Rose#114 · Ruby#64 · Robin#704 · Rita#1285 · Rhonda#6116
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Raymond? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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