Rafael
89,947 recorded births · active 1880–2025
Compare Rafael →Living-age distribution
The median living Rafael is 29. If you meet a Rafael, there's about a 70% chance they're between 9 and 53 years old.
Popularity arc
Peak Rafael: 2025. Down 6% from peak.
Projected: the dashed 10-year forecast (Holt damped-trend exponential smoothing, fit to recent years), with a shaded 95% interval.
Gender balance
Rafael is almost always given to male babies — 99.4% male.
Rarity
Rafael ranks #746 out of 105,966 names ever recorded by the SSA.
Geographic fingerprint
Rafaels are 2.2x more common in the West than the national average.
Predictive modeling
Three statistical models, all fit to Rafael's own SSA history plus the historical behavior of every other name in the dataset.
Peak popularity prediction
Trending toward a peak rank around #384 (95% range 308–489) in 2035.
Projects the trend forward, then converts share into rank using this year's popularity distribution.
This forecasts Rafael's share of births by fitting a damped-trend model to its last 145 years of data and projecting 10 years forward with a widening uncertainty band. Each projected share is then translated into a rank by comparing it against 2025's actual name-popularity distribution — so the model implicitly assumes the overall shape of that distribution doesn't shift much over the forecast window. Its current trend is projected to set a new all-time high within the next 10 years. Milestone probabilities come from how much of each year's uncertainty band clears that milestone's rank, combined across years as if they were independent — which slightly overstates the odds for names sitting right at a threshold, since a good year is usually followed by another good year rather than an independent coin flip.Name life-cycle stage
A rule-based classifier over recent growth, momentum, and peak proximity.
Rafael's all-time high was just this year — it's at or very near its historic peak right now.
Popularity survival model
Once a name reaches a rank tier, how long does it typically stay there before falling out?
Built from a Kaplan-Meier survival curve: every historical run any name has ever had above this tier, with runs still ongoing today counted as still in progress rather than as an exit.Rafael isn't currently in the Top 100 tier. Estimated chance of entering it in the forecast window: 0%.
If Rafael enters Top 100, chance it's still there after:
Names that do enter Top 100 have historically stayed a median of ~19 years. Based on 668 historical Top 100 runs across every name in the dataset.