Reece: Meaning of Baby Name Reece

About the Name Reece

Reece is the modern American spelling variant of Rhys (see separate entry on Rhys for the Welsh rhys etymology meaning "ardor" or "passion"). The Reece spelling is essentially the Anglicized phonetic form of the Welsh Rhys.

The various spellings (Reece, Reese, Rhys, Rees) are tracked separately by SSA and represent the same underlying Welsh name. The Reece spelling specifically appeals to parents seeking a more visually distinctive form than the more popular Reese. The name has been used predominantly for boys in modern American naming.

Notable contemporary bearers include American basketball player Reece Whitley; the contemporary fictional Reece of various contemporary novels; and various contemporary American social media influencers. Reece's American climb is recent: the name climbed from outside the US top 1000 in 2000 to the US top 300 boys' rank by 2018 and the top 300 since. The name has been driven primarily by Welsh-American naming and the broader American taste for distinctive Celtic boys' names alongside Liam and Aiden. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the layered Welsh-medieval-royal pedigree, the in-built distinctive ardor/passion etymology, and the compact one-syllable structure with the distinctive R-S consonant rhythm. The name reads as both classical-Welsh and contemporary American. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — the rare Reecey and Reecie each occasionally appear; the alternate spellings Rhys (the Welsh original), Reece, Reese (the more popular American spelling for girls), and Rees have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Rhys (Welsh original).

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.

Quick Facts About Reece

5,642

English baby names in our dictionary

3,391

English male names

170

5-letter R-names in our dictionary

575

R-male names total

2000–2025

years of US SSA records (26 total)

16,248

total US births named Reece (all years)

US Popularity History (2000–2025)

🔥 Rising fast: Reece climbed 131 places in the US boys ranking over the last 5 years (#591 in 2020 → #460 in 2025).

Annual US births named Reece by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2001 with 798 boys named Reece (boy rank #344 that year).

Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #460 for boys (675 US births). That's 116 places below its 2001 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.

Where in the US Is Reece Most Popular?

Average boy-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 boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Reece the strongest states are Montana, Louisiana, Nebraska.

Strongest boys-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Montana	#231	18
2	Louisiana	#322	158
3	Nebraska	#331	53
4	Idaho	#371	20
5	Kentucky	#373	121
6	Indiana	#387	172
7	Kansas	#455	50
8	Mississippi	#458	35
9	Iowa	#458	67
10	Connecticut	#459	26

Weakest boys-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	New York	#870	125
2	New Jersey	#760	79
3	California	#737	333
4	Texas	#666	381
5	Washington	#641	97
6	Utah	#640	26
7	Arizona	#639	83
8	Illinois	#628	155
9	Florida	#612	246
10	Oregon	#602	43

Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Reece in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.

Variant Forms

Name	Meaning	Gender	Origin
Reese		Female	English
Rhys	Fiery.	Male	Welsh
Rice	Powerful	Male	Anglo

Looking for names like Reece?

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.

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Compare Reece to Other Popular Names

Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Reece against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).

Reece vs Liam 239,320 births since 2014

Reece vs Noah 230,181 births since 2014

Reece vs Oliver 164,076 births since 2014

Reece vs William 159,918 births since 2014

Reece vs James 157,850 births since 2014

Reece vs Elijah 153,351 births since 2014

Reece vs Benjamin 147,449 births since 2014

Reece vs Lucas 141,302 births since 2014

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