Holiday Calendar

National Reese Day

Next celebratedWednesday, July 14, 2027

The name is an English respelling of the Welsh Rhys, carried by the lord who ruled Deheubarth from 1155. The day belongs to the people called Reese, not to the candy, which has its own in May.

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEJuly 14
OBSERVED INInternationally
CATEGORYFood
SUBCATEGORYCandy
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
Not documented
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

The paper trail begins with a listing, not a founder.

No founder, proclamation, or establishing announcement has been located for National Reese Day. A holiday-listing site was already carrying the day, on July 14, by August 2022, which sets a floor on how long it has been circulating and nothing more. That listing named no originator and gave no start year.

+ Know the story? Submit a founder Help us complete this holiday
INTRO

American boys have returned to Reese every year since 2019

In 2019, American parents gave the name Reese to 312 boys. Not since 1997 had so few boys received it. National Reese Day arrives on a name that had just bottomed out with one of the two sexes.

Then it turned. The boys' count has risen in each of the six years since, with no reversals. The steps run 336, 375, 428, 439, 456, and 475 in 2025.

That climb is not a trick of a growing population. Over the same six years the total number of boys in the Social Security Administration's files fell 4.8 percent. Fewer boys were being counted, and more of them were being called Reese.

One caveat belongs next to those numbers. They count the exact registry spelling Reese, and Reece, Rees and Rhys are counted as the separate spellings they are.

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ORIGINS

Reese Day history

CHAPTER 01

From Rhys to Reese

Reese is an English respelling. Underneath it is the Welsh Rhys, which goes back to an Old Welsh form recorded as Ris.

What the root meant is less settled than where it came from. The reference gives it as probably ardour, or enthusiasm, and keeps the hedge rather than dropping it.

Several Welsh rulers carried the name. The one the record treats at length is Rhys ap Gruffydd, known as Yr Arglwydd Rhys, the Lord Rhys, who ruled Deheubarth from 1155.

CHAPTER 02

Sons of Rhys, and the surnames they left

The Welsh phrase ap Rhys means son of Rhys. Contracted, it became the surnames Price and Pryce.

The same root also produced Reece, Rees, Reese and Rice. Some people carry the name as a surname without ever having been given it as a first name.

Reese also works as a given name for either sex, and Behind the Name credits the feminine use to the American actress Reese Witherspoon.

CHAPTER 03

A day nobody signed

The name has a documented past. The day does not.

No founder, proclamation, or launch announcement has been located for National Reese Day. That absence is worth stating precisely rather than loosely, because it was tested.

A full-text search of the United States Federal Register returns no document naming the day.

TIMELINE

Timeline

A gathering at Cardigan

The gathering later remembered as an eisteddfod was held at Rhys ap Gruffydd's Cardigan fortress under his auspices. The record itself puts that word in quotation marks.

The Lord Rhys dies

Rhys ap Gruffydd died on 28 April and was buried in the cathedral church at St Davids.

Reese enters the American record

Six boys were registered as Reese in the first year of national United States birth-name data.

A surname goes on a wrapper

Harry Burnett Reese began making peanut butter cups about this year, attaching the family name to a product that would outlive him.

The candy company is sold

The H.B. Reese Candy Company passed to Hershey. Its founder had died in 1956, without seeing the sale.

Girls take the lead

For the first time, girls named Reese outnumbered boys, 996 to 709. It is the only crossing the two lines have ever made.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Reese Day by the Numbers

1,631
US girls named Reese in 2025
2,459
Girls named Reese at the 2012 peak
144 of 146
Years Reese appears in US boys' birth data
36 of 146
Years Reese appears in US girls' birth data

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Reese Day

Reese Witherspoon's first name is Laura

Britannica records her name in full as Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon. The name she goes by, and the one this day is named for, sits third in her own.

Two missing years are a privacy rule, not a gap

Reese drops out of the boys' file in 1887 and 1890. The agency lists only names given to at least five babies of one sex, so those years mean fewer than five boys, not none.

The candy man lost his job before he found his product

Harry Burnett Reese managed Hershey's Round Barn until it was shut down as a cost saving measure in 1919. The candy company he started next failed. The peanut butter cups came about 1928.

His first bars were named after his children

Before the cups there was the Lizzie Bar, for his eldest daughter Mary Elizabeth, then the Johnny Bar for a son. He and Blanche had 16 children, and in 1928 a photograph of the whole family ran in advertisements captioned 16 Good Reasons to Buy Reese's.

Pooling the spellings changes the story

Reece, Rees and Rhys share Reese's root. Counted together the boys' total still climbs, from 1,499 in 2019 to 2,108 in 2024, but then falls to 1,942 in 2025. The unbroken run belongs to the exact spelling Reese, not to the family of spellings.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Reese Day

MOTION

Most name days honour something settled. This one lands on a name still moving.

Most name days honour something settled. This one does not, and the rarity is measurable: among boys' names with at least 100 births in 2019 that appear in every file through 2025, only 63 of 1,641 rose at every step. Reese is one of the 63.

PEOPLE

It separates the people from the product

The word reaches a lot of Americans as a possessive on a candy wrapper before it reaches them as anybody's name. The product has its own day for that: Hershey traces I Love Reese's Day to a 2010 fan petition of some 40,000 signatures, and put it in May. That leaves July 14 to the people.

SCOPE

The name is older and wider than the numbers on this page

Every hard figure here comes from one country's birth registers, and those begin in 1880. Rhys was carried by Welsh rulers seven centuries earlier. The measurements are narrow and the name is not, which is worth knowing before anyone reads a count as the whole story.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Reese Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Look up the year you were born

The Social Security Administration publishes a file for every year back to 1880. Find your own birth year and count the Reeses who arrived with you.

LEARN

Learn the Welsh original

Rhys is the form Reese was respelled from. Spend five minutes with the older spelling and the English one stops looking like the default.

TRACE

Trace the surname in your own family

Price, Pryce, Reece, Rees, Reese and Rice all descend from the same Welsh root. A quick pass through a family tree often turns one of them up a few generations back.

PUT

Put the meaning in the message

A greeting that says only happy name day passes straight through. Add where the name came from and what it probably meant, hedge included, and it becomes something the person actually keeps.

SEND

Send the day to a Reese nobody profiles

The famous one is easy to name. Use the day for the others, and tell them where the name actually comes from.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Reese Day?

1 / 6

Reese is the anglicized form of which Welsh name?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance with no legal standing that could be located, so July 14 is a normal working day.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

8sources
4primary records
4independently dated
Primary records
Social Security Administration2026-03
National data on the relative frequency of given names (names.zip, 1880 to 2025)
Every US given name with at least five births per year and sex, since 1880.
View source
Hershey Community Archives2018-09-07
H.B. Reese Candy Company
Harry Burnett Reese's dairy work, his failed first venture, and the peanut butter cup.
View source
The Hershey Company2026-05-18
Around the World, Love for Reese's Shows Up in Big Ways
The company's own account of I Love Reese's Day, its May 18 date and 2010 petition.
View source
Office of the Federal Register
Federal Register document full-text search API
The federal document index searched for any mention of this observance.
View source
Additional coverage
Dictionary of Welsh Biography
Rhys ap Gruffydd (1132 to 1197), lord of Deheubarth
The Lord Rhys, his rule of Deheubarth, and the 1176 gathering at Cardigan.
View source
Behind the Name
Meaning, origin and history of the name Rhys
The Old Welsh root Ris, its hedged meaning, and the surnames descended from it.
View source
Behind the Name2022-01-21
Meaning, origin and history of the name Reese
Reese as the anglicized form of Rhys, used for both sexes.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Reese Witherspoon
The actress's full name, birth details, and her 2006 Academy Award.
View source
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