Ruben

126,201 people in America carry this name — ranked #446 of 923.

Carried mostly by the Millennials.

Say it ROO buhn

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

R UW1 B AH0 N — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 126,201 2020 Census
  • Rank #446 Common
  • Per 100,000 41.8 about 1 in 2,626 people
  • As a surname 2,679 ranked #11,281 the other way round

Where Ruben comes from and what it means

Hebrew in origin, reading literally as “behold a son”.

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.

Ruben name popularity by year

113,995 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1992, with 1,814 of them.

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

Most people carrying it were born in the 1990s. 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.

What goes well after Ruben

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Ruben Robert — same opening
  • Ruben Richard — same opening
  • Ruben Nicholas — 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.

Never out of use

Ruben has been given in every decade on record — no fashion lifted it and none has dropped it.

Is Ruben a boy's or a girl's name?

99.8% men
290 women

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

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Where in America Ruben is thickest on the ground

In Texas the name is given 3.2 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Texas ×3.2
  • New Mexico ×3.2
  • Arizona ×2.9
  • California ×2.8
  • Nevada ×1.2

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

Names built the same way as Ruben

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

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

Who has this name today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 5.3%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 2.5%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 89.3%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 2.0%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

The likeliest full names

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 abroad

  • Reuben English

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.

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 Hebrew origin