Rebekah
Feminine
Rebekah is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 75,796 girls against 119 boys since 1880.
Rebekah is the spelling the King James translators chose for the Old Testament in 1611 — the same woman the New Testament pages of that Bible call Rebecca. Four centuries later both spellings are still in use, still pronounced identically, and still shortened the same handful of ways. It is a name with an unbroken paper trail from Hebrew scripture to this year's classrooms.
How old is the name Rebekah?
Rebekah first appears in US birth records in 1883 — 142 years ago. The typical Rebekah alive today was born around 1993, making them about 32 years old. About 73,000 people named Rebekah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Rebekah most popular?
Rebekah peaked in 1982, reaching #143 nationally. Today it ranks #884, 741 places below that high. See the whole 1982 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Rivqah to Rebekah
The story of Rebekah
The name belongs first to the book of Genesis, where Rebekah is the wife of Isaac and mother of Jacob and Esau. Greek-speaking translators of the Hebrew Bible wrote it Rhebekka; Latin made it Rebecca, and that is the form medieval Europe knew. English kept both: when the King James Bible appeared in 1611 it spelled the Old Testament figure Rebekah and the single New Testament mention Rebecca, and the two spellings have run side by side in English ever since. Puritan families in seventeenth-century England and the American colonies took up scriptural names in earnest, and Rebekah crossed the Atlantic with them.
Meaningnot established
Not established
The Hebrew original is Rivqah, and no one has settled what it meant. The long-standing traditional gloss links it to a Semitic root having to do with tying or binding, and older name books often render it as 'to bind' or 'ensnaring' — but that connection is a guess of interpreters rather than a documented derivation. What is certain is the form itself: Rivqah in Hebrew, Rhebekka in the Greek of the Septuagint, Rebecca in the Latin Vulgate.
How the name formed
- Rivqah
- Rhebekka
- Rebecca
- Rebekah
Related forms: Rivka · Rebekka · Rebeca · Rebecca · Rébecca · Rivke
Pronouncing Rebekah
ruh-BEK-uh
Identical to Rebecca — the final -h is silent and changes nothing you hear. Three syllables, stress in the middle.
Nicknames for Rebekah
High
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
- 1883
- Most girls named
- 19962,222 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #143reached in 1982
- Change vs 2022
- +4.5%302 in 2025, from 289
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.
Rebekah in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Rivka in Hebrew — transliteration
- Rebekka in German — spelling variant
- Rebeca in Spanish — same name
- Rebecca in Italian — same name
- Rébecca in French — same name
- Rivke in Yiddish — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, Pennsylvania.
Rebekahs among us
people named Rebekah are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 5,322 born in 2025 was named Rebekah
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Rebekah
- #884
- Rebekah on the 2025 chart
- #245
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Rebekah went to 302 girls in 2025, but Rebecca, Rebeca and Rebeka are the same name said out loud. Together the 5 spellings went to 1,359, which makes it the 245th most-given girls’ name of the year — 639 places above the chart.
and 1 rarer spelling.
About 1 girl in 1,183 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 5,322 for Rebekah 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 Lynne test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Rebekah's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Lynne climbed just as high around 1951, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Lynne's path sketches the road Rebekah is walking now.
Rebekah 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 Rebekah is headed
Rebekah should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
Medium 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.
Rebekah beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Rebekah in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Pronunciation is never in doubt: anyone who can read Rebecca reads this correctly on sight.
- A documented record stretching from Hebrew scripture through Greek and Latin to English, unbroken for well over two thousand years.
- An unusually deep bench of short forms — Becca, Bekah, Becky, Bex, Reba — so the child has real choices as she grows.
- Recognizable across Spanish, Italian, French, German and Hebrew with only small adjustments to the spelling.
- Rebecca is the default spelling in most people's heads, so this version will be corrected on forms and typed wrong in emails throughout her life. A short 'with a k-a-h' becomes a lifelong reflex.
- The spelling is uncommon, but the sound is not. She may well share it with a Rebecca in class, which is worth knowing if the appeal was hearing something rare rather than seeing it.
- 'Becky' picked up a dismissive stereotype in American pop culture over the past decade. The name has several other short forms, and the association attaches to that one rather than to Rebekah itself.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Rebekah
Feminine · #884 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Rebekahs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 73,000 people named Rebekah are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Rebekah?
- Rebekah is one of 4 recorded spellings. Rebecca is the more common one — 872 births in 2025 against 302 for Rebekah.
- How popular is the name Rebekah in 2025?
- Rebekah ranks #884 among US girl names in 2025, with 302 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Rebekah?
- About 1 in every 5,322 US girls born in 2025 was named Rebekah — 302 in all.
- Will my child share the name Rebekah with classmates?
- Rebekah will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Rebekah
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Vada#884 · Tilly#884 · Megan#887 · Aviana#887 · Odette#881 · Emi#881 · Colbie#881 · Berkley#887
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Rebekah? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Rebekah and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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