Rebekah
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Captivating
- Origin
- Hebrew
About the Name Rebekah
Rebekah is an alternate English spelling of Rebecca, from the Hebrew Ribqāh, meaning "captivating," "snare," or "one who binds" — a name borne by one of the four great matriarchs of the Hebrew Bible. Rebekah in Genesis is the wife of Isaac and mother of the twin brothers Jacob and Esau, a figure of intelligence and decisive action whose story spans chapters 24 through 27 of Genesis. The spelling Rebekah hews closest to the Hebrew transliteration and was long the preferred form in older English Bible translations, giving it a distinctly biblical and traditionalist flavour compared to the more common modern spelling Rebecca. It appeals to families with strong scriptural commitments who want to honour the original text.
The two spellings coexist in English-speaking culture much as Rachael/Rachel do — the Rebekah form carrying a slightly more formal, archival weight, the Rebecca form more widely used in mainstream secular contexts. Rebekah's retention in the SSA charts into the present day reflects the enduring pull of its biblical authority among religiously committed naming communities across the United States.
Rebekah first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 2000, the year it peaked at #173, and has shown remarkable staying power, accumulating 20,790 top-1000 births and remaining in the charts through 2024, when it ranked #877 with 307 births. That longevity — more than two decades in the top-1000 — marks it as a name with a stable, committed user base. The recorded variant is Rebecah.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Rebekah
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Rebekah by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2000 with 1,896 girls named Rebekah (girl rank #173 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #884 for girls (302 US births). That's 711 places below its 2000 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Rebekah Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Rebekah the strongest states are Idaho, Arkansas, Pennsylvania.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Idaho | #425 | 16 |
| 2 | Arkansas | #445 | 33 |
| 3 | Pennsylvania | #465 | 221 |
| 4 | Kansas | #518 | 34 |
| 5 | Utah | #556 | 69 |
| 6 | Iowa | #558 | 32 |
| 7 | Oregon | #571 | 28 |
| 8 | Mississippi | #571 | 17 |
| 9 | Ohio | #588 | 152 |
| 10 | Indiana | #592 | 85 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York | #958 | 89 |
| 2 | California | #898 | 223 |
| 3 | Washington | #865 | 48 |
| 4 | North Carolina | #848 | 99 |
| 5 | Colorado | #847 | 21 |
| 6 | Louisiana | #839 | 30 |
| 7 | Massachusetts | #771 | 28 |
| 8 | Wisconsin | #764 | 34 |
| 9 | Maryland | #762 | 52 |
| 10 | Arizona | #751 | 65 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Rebekah in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Looking for names like Rebekah?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Rebekah to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Rebekah against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).