Roma vs Romeo

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Roma Romeo

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 144 years in which either name was published, Roma for 79 years and Romeo for 65 years. The lead changed hands 6 times.

• 1880 Romeo ahead
• 1883–1891 Roma ahead
• 1892 Romeo ahead
• 1893–1961 Roma ahead
• 1962–1964 Romeo ahead
• 1965 Roma ahead
• 1966–2025 Romeo ahead

Side by side

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 Romas alive today are over 51; half the Romeos are over 11. That is 40 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Roma Nebraska (7.8×), Idaho (4.3×), Utah (4.0×)
• Romeo Nevada (4.9×), Maine (3.1×), Arizona (2.9×)

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.

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

• Roma vs Roman
• Roma vs Romina
• Roma vs Rome
• Roma vs Romona
• Roma vs Romaine
• Romeo vs Roman
• Romeo vs Romina
• Romeo vs Rome