Raney

surname · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Raney is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Liberia it is the 24th most common surname. Recorded meaning: Variant of Rainey.

rarermore common
  • NZNew Zealand≈1 in 6.3Kas Rainey(inferred from the name graph)
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 14Kas Rainey
  • USUnited States1 in 14Kas Rainey

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Raney itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

23,291 named Rainey, 2010

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
455 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 234K (inferred from the name graph)

United Arab Emirates, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

RaineyLatin(measured from records)
레이니Hangul(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Rainey in US United States, GB United Kingdom, CA Canada and 4 more and Lanie in AE United Arab Emirates.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Variant of Rainey.

Sources 2

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Wiktionary

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Raney counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.

Where Raney is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#88523,291as Rainey1 in 14K23KRainey455
GB United Kingdom—≈4,700 est.≈1 in 14K1.7KRainey175
EG Egypt—≈3,500 est.≈1 in 29K—Rainey8
IT Italy—≈2,200 est.≈1 in 28KlistedRainey14
CA Canada—≈2,000 est.≈1 in 19K3Rainey104
LR Liberia#24≈1,500 est.≈1 in 3.3K—Rainey1
FI Finland—943as Reini1 in 5.9K1.8K—3
NZ New Zealand#646≈790 est.≈1 in 6.3K—Rainey42
AE United Arab Emirates—≈43 est.≈1 in 234K—Lanie13

23,291 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.

Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Raney is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, France, Brazil, Colombia

    Languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese

    Also written Ranêy

51 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

18001850190019502000George P. Raney, b. 1845John Henry Raney, b. 1849Murray Raney, b. 1885Della H. Raney, b. 1912Wayne Raney, b. 1921Ribs Raney, b. 1923Jimmy Raney, b. 1927John N. Raney, b. 1947Doug Raney, b. 1956Tom Raney, b. 1960

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 25 sources across 11 countries.

Official registers attesting Raney
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020108.8K#4,038
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020008.4K#3,878
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020208.2K#4,167
GB United KingdomSurnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register)200249#51,457
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 4

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Raney mean, and where does it come from?
Variant of Rainey. Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and Wiktionary.
In which country does Raney have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 23 thousand people named Rainey, more than in any other country we hold.
How common is the name Raney?
In the United States, the national register counted 23,291 people named Rainey in 2010, about 1 in 14 thousand residents.
How common is Raney compared with other names?
In the United States, Raney is the 885th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Raney?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/raney

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), and bulk access is licensed separately.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Raney” — the 885th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Raney parses inside a full name →