Meaning and history
Rébecca comes from the Hebrew name רִבְקָה (Rivqa), probably from a Semitic root meaning “join, tie, snare,” and it is the name of Isaac’s wife and the mother of Esau and Jacob in the Old Testament. It entered use as an English Christian name after the Protestant Reformation and was popular with the Puritans in the 17th century, remaining in steady use and becoming especially common in the second half of the 20th century. The name is also borne by a Jewish woman in Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1819) and by the title character, though deceased and unseen, in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (1938).
20062006: 3,573 births, rank #96
2007: 3,215 births, rank #105
2008: 2,922 births, rank #118
2009: 2,473 births, rank #132
2010: 2,299 births, rank #134
20112011: 2,119 births, rank #148
2012: 2,019 births, rank #157
2013: 1,806 births, rank #177
2014: 1,782 births, rank #181
2015: 1,728 births, rank #188
20162016: 1,580 births, rank #205
2017: 1,433 births, rank #214
2018: 1,459 births, rank #211
2019: 1,263 births, rank #263
2020: 1,212 births, rank #248
20212021: 1,051 births, rank #304
2022: 1,075 births, rank #295
2023: 985 births, rank #315
2024: 918 births, rank #340
20252025: 872 births, rank #349
Rebecca moved from #340 to #350 for girls between 2024 and 2025. Its highest annual birth count came in 1981, with 16,737 births.