Reginald

68,879 people in America carry this name — ranked #740 of 923.

A name of the post-war decades.

Say it REH juh nuhld

3 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

R EH1 JH AH0 N AH0 L D — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 68,879 2020 Census
  • Rank #740 Familiar
  • Per 100,000 22.8 about 1 in 4,812 people
  • As a surname 207 ranked #94,713 the other way round

The meaning and origin of Reginald

Teutonic in origin, reading literally as “powerful judgment”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

Reginald through the years

111,374 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1962, with 2,669 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50 60s 70 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1960s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

Middle names for Reginald

Three syllables already, so a short middle name keeps the whole from running long.

Better avoided

  • Reginald David — runs together
  • Reginald Robert — same opening
  • Reginald Daniel — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

Going quiet

Reginald has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to the Baby Boomers.

Is Reginald used for boys or for girls?

99.8% men
167 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Same syllables and stress as Reginald

Nothing else in the file ends on the same sound — a rare thing, and useful if you want a first name nobody will echo.

Same rhythm — 3 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

Full names people carry

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

The same name elsewhere

  • Reginand French

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

How Reginald is spelled

Reginald is how 33% of them spell it — 208,031 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Try it Full-Name Estimator

Add a surname and see how many Americans carry the two together.

Open Full-Name Estimator on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Teutonic origin