Rufus
#3,949 in the US in 2025
Rufus in the United States
Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been steady.
SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Rufus in New Zealand
Rufus never reached 10 births in a single year in New Zealand, so it does not appear in the DIA file. That is a reporting floor, not a zero — the name may still have been registered here, just never ten times in one year.
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
Decade by decade in the US
| Year | Rank | Births |
|---|---|---|
| 1880 | #88 | 163 |
| 1890 | #126 | 115 |
| 1900 | #140 | 157 |
| 1910 | #145 | 221 |
| 1920 | #188 | 729 |
| 1930 | #225 | 565 |
| 1940 | #257 | 460 |
| 1950 | #334 | 407 |
| 1960 | #441 | 332 |
| 1970 | #596 | 184 |
| 1980 | #712 | 149 |
| 1990 | #1,216 | 81 |
| 2000 | #2,578 | 36 |
| 2010 | #3,128 | 36 |
| 2020 | #3,918 | 26 |
Where in the United States
The states that registered Rufus 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.
| State | Births |
|---|---|
| Georgia | 4,238 |
| North Carolina | 3,198 |
| Alabama | 2,471 |
| Texas | 2,405 |
| South Carolina | 2,297 |
| Mississippi | 1,932 |
| Virginia | 1,558 |
| Florida | 1,421 |
| Louisiana | 1,324 |
| Tennessee | 1,319 |
How these figures are worked out
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Each country hides small numbers — the US below 5 births a year, New Zealand below 10. A gap in a line is "below the floor", never "nobody".
SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026