Humanverse

Roderick vs Rodger

American parents have registered 47,446 Rodericks since 1880, against 21,556 Rodgers. Roderick is still ahead, with 93 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Roderick against Rodger, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Roderick Rodger

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 143 years in which either name was published, Roderick for 119 years and Rodger for 24 years. The lead changed hands 10 times.

Side by side

  Roderick Rodger
Total US births 47,44621,556
Most in one year 1,067680
Babies in 2025 9318
Estimated living today 37,00013,000
Median age today 5065
Peak year 19711949
Best rank 223rd boys247th boys
Rank in 2025 1,743rd5,208th
First recorded 18801891
Girls / boys 263 / 47,1830 / 21,556

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Rodgers alive today are over 65; half the Rodericks are over 50. That is 15 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Roderick Rodger
Scotland 67937
Ireland 21869

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Roderick and Rodger.