Humanverse

Rosa vs Rosey

American parents have registered 178,588 Rosas since 1880, against 1,288 Roseys. Rosa is still ahead, with 441 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Rosa Rosey

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 2021, when Rosa had 451 and Rosey had 31.

Side by side

  Rosa Rosey
Total US births 178,5881,288
Most in one year 2,24531
Babies in 2025 44126
Estimated living today 92,000700
Median age today 5430
Peak year 19252020
Best rank 125th girls4,358th girls
Rank in 2025 652nd4,987th
First recorded 18801881
Girls / boys 177,415 / 1,1731,288 / 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 Roseys are over 30. That is 24 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 Rosey
England and Wales 6,706289
Scotland 6803
Northern Ireland 4983

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 Rosey.