Rion - Name Meaning and Popularity -

Meaning of Rion

Rion is a unisex appellation whose earliest attestations in Anglophone records derive from an Irish surname variant of Ryan—itself composed of the Old Gaelic rí (‘king’) with the diminutive suffix –ín—thereby conferring a meaning approximating ‘little king.’ Its pronunciation is uniformly rendered as RYE-uhn (/ˈraɪ.ən/) across British and American English. Introduced into United States birth registries in the mid-twentieth century, the name has since exhibited a modest but sustained presence, with its popularity ranking oscillating within the high seven- to low nine-hundreds over recent decades and rising slightly from 895th in 2023 to 889th in 2024. Moreover, Rion’s adoption in Japanese naming practices, where various kanji spellings imbue it with additional semantic layers, further underscores its contemporary resonance as a concise yet historically grounded choice for parents seeking an effectively gender-neutral designation.