Zoe or Zoey, Reuben or Ruben: the names Britain and America spell differently

In England and Wales in 2025, 1,412 boys were registered as Reuben and 527 as Ruben. In America in 2017 it was 745 Rubens and 235 Reubens. Same name, same sound, and the two countries spell it the other way round. America used to agree with us: Reuben led there every year from 1880 to 1924. Ruben went in front in 1925 and has stayed there for a century.

We went looking for every name like that. There are 31 of them, 15 boys' names and 16 girls', where the spelling most British parents choose is not the spelling most American parents choose. Zoe here, Zoey there. Myles here, Miles there. Robyn here, Robin there. And on eight of the 31, America is drifting our way: on the 2025 American rankings the British spelling now sits above the American one.

How we counted

Two spellings are one name when they are said the same way. The sound key that runs the “Sounds like” section on every name page grouped every spelling in the American 2017 counts and the English and Welsh 2025 file, boys and girls from their own lists, and we then checked every group by eye, because a key cannot hear. A name is on the list when the spelling with the most babies in America is not the spelling with the most babies in England and Wales, and the winning spelling in each country has at least 100 babies there or 50 here. We count spelling, not reason: Rafael and Raphael are said the same way, so they are on the list, and it does not matter that one is the Spanish form. Pairs that many people say differently are not on it: Sarah and Sara, Madelyn and Madeleine, Vivian and Vivienne, Camila and Camilla. The American counts are from 2017, the newest full count we hold; the American rankings are this year's.

The 31

The table gives both countries' counts and the British spelling's share of the pair in each. The widest gaps are Freddie, 95% of the pair here and 32% there, Iyla, 93% and 36%, Jenson, 69% and 14%, and Macie, 91% and 39%; then Imaan, Reuben, Laurence and Darcie, all about 49 points apart. The narrowest is Armaan, 57 boys to 50 here and 92 to 104 there.

One pair is level in America and is not counted: Elliot 2,416 and Elliott 2,421 there, five babies apart, against 544 and 418 here. And the biggest spelling split of all, Muhammad, is not on the list because both countries put the same spelling first; it is the second spelling that differs, Mohammed here with 1,712 boys and Mohamed there with 662. That one has its own article.

A third of the list is one group

Ten of the 31 are names that came into English from Arabic, Persian or Urdu, or, in two cases, an Arabic name on our side and an English one on theirs. On every one the two countries have settled on a different way of writing the same sound: Zayn here and Zane there, Zayd and Zaid, Hussain and Hussein, Zakariya and Zakaria, Haris and Harris, Armaan and Arman, Eesa and Isa, Ayah and Aya, Imaan and Iman, Inaya and Inaaya. There is no single rule in it. Britain writes the long a twice in Armaan and Imaan, America writes it twice in Inaaya. Britain puts a y where America puts an i in Zayn and Zayd, and an ai where America puts an ei in Hussain. Zakariya is 85% of its pair here, the widest of the ten; Armaan is the narrowest on the whole list. Zane was in the American top 1,000 from 1921, long before Zayn arrived, and Harris was there in 1880; those two are the pairs where the American spelling is an English name in its own right.

Britain keeps the ie

Four of the 31 are a name that ends in an ee sound, and on all four Britain writes -ie and America writes -y: Freddie and Freddy, Emmie and Emmy, Darcie and Darcy, Macie and Maci. That is the pattern we found in the article on pet-name endings: America spelled it Freddie too until 1989, and Emmie and Macie were the American spellings of the 1880s. Three more are an old British C against an American K, or the other way about: Catherine and Katherine (America switched in 1973), Cara and Kara (1967), and Kairo and Cairo, where it is Britain that takes the K. Three are a y where America has an i: Myles, Robyn, Iyla, with Alayna and Alaina close behind. And three of the American spellings are the ones used in Spanish: Rafael, Ruben and Daniela.

It is not true that Britain simply keeps the older spelling. Of the 18 pairs with a run in the American series since 1880, the British spelling is the one that led in America first in nine (Freddie, Raphael, Reuben, Zoe, Catherine, Emmie, Cara, Erica, Macie), and the American spelling led from the start in the other nine (Jackson, Miles, Lawrence, Madison, Robin, Darcy, Daniela, Alaina, Reyna). Jaxon is the clearest case the other way: it first made the American top 1,000 in 1997, and it is Britain, not America, that has taken it up over Jackson, 605 boys to 372 here against 7,649 to 10,356 there.

America is coming round

The counts are from 2017. The rankings run to 2025, and on them the British spelling has moved in front of the American one on eight of the 31. Zoe was 33rd in America in 2015 and Zoey 23rd; Zoe passed it in 2022 and is 31st now, with Zoey 69th. Zayn was 644th in 2015 and Zane 232nd; Zayn has been ahead since 2023, 253rd to 324th. Kairo entered the American top 1,000 in 2017 and passed Cairo in 2018; it is 226th to 341st. Macie passed Maci in 2022 (438th to 773rd), Iyla passed Ila in 2023, Reina passed Reyna in 2024, Zayd passed Zaid this year, and Inaya is in the top 1,000 while Inaaya is not. Elliot, level on the 2017 count, has sat a few places above Elliott in six of the last ten years, this year among them.

It is not all one way. On five names the American spelling has pulled further ahead there since 2015: Jaxon went from 44th to 115th while Jackson went from 17th to 36th, Catherine from 177th to 314th while Katherine went from 84th to 186th, and Maddison, Daniella and Alayna have slipped against their pairs too. Myles, Raphael and Reuben have closed some of the gap without crossing: Myles is 223rd to 100th, but Miles went 107th to 44th. In England and Wales almost nothing moved: the British spelling's share of the pair changed by under five points on 29 of the 31 between 2024 and 2025. The two that moved more went in opposite directions. Catherine and Katherine were level here in 2024, 66 girls each, and were 66 to 40 in 2025; Robyn went from 82% of its pair to 77%.

Where they agree

The list is short because most of the time the two countries agree. We checked every name with two spellings in real use on both sides of the Atlantic, and on most of them the same spelling wins in both: Sophia over Sofia (14,831 to 8,134 there, 1,547 to 1,490 here), Lily over Lilly, Isaac over Issac, Aiden over Aidan, Luca over Luka, Oscar over Oskar, Zack over Zach, Millie over Milly, Yusuf over Yousef. Even Hailey beats Hayley here now, 115 girls to 83. Mateo and Matteo are a dead heat in England and Wales, 328 boys each, and Mateo wins in America by nearly four to one.

What we cannot tell you

Why. The files say what parents wrote on the form, not why they wrote it, so we cannot say whether an American Ruben is a Spanish Ruben or an English one, or why Britain doubles the a in Imaan and America doubles it in Inaaya. The 2017 American count and the 2025 British count are eight years apart, and the rankings since show some of these gaps closing, so a full American count for 2025 might take several names off the list, starting with the eight above. The sound key and our checking of it are a judgement: the pairs we left out, and why, are listed under how we counted, so you can disagree with us. And Britain's own history is not here, because we hold two British years.

What it means for you

If you are choosing between two spellings, the table tells you which one your child will share a classroom with. In England and Wales Reuben outnumbers Ruben nearly three to one, Zoe outnumbers Zoey more than four to one, and Freddie outnumbers Freddy nineteen to one. If you want the spelling that is rising, the American rankings are the only series we hold that moves year by year, and on them Zoe, Zayn, Kairo and Macie are the spellings on the way up. If you want the one that is older, the answer is a coin toss: half the time it is ours, half the time it is theirs.