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Boys' name · 369,078 recorded births

Russell

#345 in the US in 2025

Where Russell stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#345boys’ names · US 2025

Russell was the 345th most registered boys' name in the United States in 2025, on 944 births.

peak 1960 · 7,487188019532025

Its moment was 1960, when 7,487 babies were given it.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

#345US rank, 2025 (boys)
944US births in 2025
#48its best US rank, in 1904
1960peak year — 7,487 births
359,780US births since 1880
7,433NZ births since 1902
169E&W births, 2019–2025
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Russell's figures are worked out

  1. Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
  2. Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
  3. The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
  4. The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
  5. A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Russell was under the floor in no year of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000

Full methodology →

Russell in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.0196392
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Russell in the United States, 1880–2025
boysgirls

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been rising — up 34% as a share of boys' births.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Russell in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Russell has been registered 7,433 times since 1902, peaking in 1961 with 214 births. It did not clear the DIA's 10-birth reporting floor in 2025.

1900192019401960198020002020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 10-BIRTH FLOOR0.0464927
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 10-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Russell in New Zealand, 1900–2025

SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Russell in England & Wales

In England and Wales, Russell was registered 169 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2025 with 32 births. It ranked #953 for boys in 2025 on 32 births. Across those years it has been rising.

2020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 3-BIRTH FLOOR0.05.812
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 3-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Russell in England and Wales, 2019–2025

Seven years is a window, not a history. Unlike the American and New Zealand series this one cannot show you a name's arrival or its long decline — ONS publishes the full list only from 2019. England and Wales only: Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and are not counted here.

SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Decade by decade in the US

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1880#19662
1890#94182
1900#62427
1910#58615
1920#513,901
1930#603,101
1940#723,012
1950#674,945
1960#567,487
1970#585,106
1980#923,269
1990#1422,212
2000#320894
2010#403699
2020#370842

<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.

Where in the United States

The states that registered Russell most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.

StateBirths
California25,083
Pennsylvania22,813
New York22,196
Ohio20,019
Illinois19,356
Texas17,892
Michigan16,261
Massachusetts11,190
New Jersey10,313
Missouri10,037

Questions about Russell

How popular is the name Russell?

Russell ranked #345 for boys in the United States in 2025, on 944 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Russell most popular?

Russell peaked in 1960, when 7,487 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Russell rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all boys' births, Russell has been rising between 2016 and 2025 (+34%).

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 1960, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.

SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026

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Published by

Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.