Humanverse

Rosa vs Rosalin

American parents have registered 178,588 Rosas since 1880, against 908 Rosalins. Rosa is still ahead, with 441 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Rosa against Rosalin, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Rosa Rosalin

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

Rosa has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2022, when Rosa had 494 and Rosalin had 19.

Side by side

  Rosa Rosalin
Total US births 178,588908
Most in one year 2,24519
Babies in 2025 44115
Estimated living today 92,000720
Median age today 5439
Peak year 19252022
Best rank 125th girls6,229th girls
Rank in 2025 652nd7,133rd
First recorded 18801914
Girls / boys 177,415 / 1,173908 / 0

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 Rosas alive today are over 54; half the Rosalins are over 39. That is 15 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

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

Country Rosa Rosalin
England and Wales 6,70613

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: Rosa and Rosalin.