Russell

202,735 people in America carry this name — ranked #271 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it RUH suhl

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

R AH1 S AH0 L — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 202,735 2020 Census
  • Rank #271 Common
  • Per 100,000 67.1 about 1 in 1,635 people

What Russell means and where it comes from

French in origin, reading literally as “red-haired, somewhat reddish”.

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.

How often Russell has been given

357,008 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1960, with 7,501 of them.

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

Most people carrying it were born in the 1950s.

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 Russell

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

Better avoided

  • Russell Robert — same opening
  • Russell Richard — same opening
  • Russell Ronald — same opening

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.

A name and a surname

Russell is carried in front of the comma and behind it — thousands of Americans have it as a surname too.

Boys or girls: who is called Russell?

99.8% men
393 women

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

Who has this name today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 86.0%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 6.0%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 2.5%
  • Two or more races — 2.9%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 1.7%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.8%

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.

Where in America Russell is thickest on the ground

In Montana the name is given 2.1 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Montana ×2.1
  • Wyoming ×1.9
  • Hawaii ×1.8
  • Utah ×1.8
  • Alaska ×1.6

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.

Same syllables and stress as Russell

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 — 2 syllables, stress on the first

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

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Try it Name Matcher

Enter a surname and hear which first names sit well with it.

The matcher is confident about clashes — rhymes, doubled sounds, colliding stresses — because those are facts about the phonemes. Ordering the names that pass is a set of rules, not a verdict on beauty.

Open Name Matcher 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