Reba
Feminine
Reba is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 35,431 girls against 60 boys since 1880.
Reba is Rebecca with the front removed — an unusual direction for English to take a name, and the reason Reba sounds nothing like Becky despite sharing a parent.
How old is the name Reba?
Reba was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Reba alive today was born around 1933, making them about 92 years old. About 13,500 people named Reba are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Reba most popular?
Reba peaked in 1928, reaching #231 nationally. Today it ranks #10107, 9,876 places below that high. See the whole 1928 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Rivqah to Reba
The story of Reba
Rebecca is the wife of Isaac in Genesis, introduced at a well and portrayed as the decisive actor in the story of her sons. The name reached English through the Reformation and stayed in steady use. Its short forms mostly came from the front — Becky, Beck, Bex — but American families also took the back, giving Reba, which appears in the registers from the 1880s and peaked around 1900.
Meaningscholars disagree
Not established
Through Rebecca, from the Hebrew Rivqah, whose meaning has resisted settlement. The root is usually connected to a verb meaning to tie or bind, read as 'snare' or, in a nineteenth-century softening, as 'captivating'. Some scholars connect it instead to a word for a tethered animal. Nothing is established.
How the name formed
- Rivqah
- Rebecca
- Reba
Related forms: Rivka · Rebeca · Reba
Pronouncing Reba
REE-buh
Two syllables, stress on the first. No variation between English accents.
Nicknames for Reba
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
- 1880
- Most girls named
- 1924773 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #231reached in 1928
- Change vs 2022
- −65.4%9 in 2025, from 26
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.
Reba in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Rivka in Hebrew — related form
- Rebeca in Spanish — related form
- Reba in English — same name
Rebas among us
people named Reba are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 178,585 born in 2025 was named Reba
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Letha test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Reba's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Letha climbed just as high around 1903, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Letha's path sketches the road Reba is walking now.
Reba 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
Reba beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Reba in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Rebecca stands behind it with a documented history reaching into the Hebrew scriptures.
- The back-half derivation gives it a completely different sound from the front-half short forms.
- Two clean syllables with no pronunciation risk.
- The meaning of the parent name is genuinely unsettled.
- The connection to Rebecca is invisible without explanation.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Reba
Feminine · #10107 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Rebas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 13,500 people named Reba are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Reba in 2025?
- Reba ranks #10107 among US girl names in 2025, with 9 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Reba?
- About 1 in every 178,585 US girls born in 2025 was named Reba — 9 in all.
- Will my child share the name Reba with classmates?
- Reba will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Reba
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Berta#10107 · Jettie#10107 · Maye#10107 · Osa#10107 · Fidelia#10107 · Alysa#10107 · Su#10107 · Willie#10107
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Reba? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Reba and another name?
See them side by side — full stats, history and a gentle verdict.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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