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Rosaleen vs Rosie

American parents have registered 86,026 Rosies since 1880, against 1,218 Rosaleens. Rosie is still ahead, with 1,088 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Rosaleen against Rosie, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Rosaleen Rosie

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

Rosie 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 2010, when Rosaleen had 14 and Rosie had 129.

Side by side

  Rosaleen Rosie
Total US births 1,21886,026
Most in one year 511,581
Babies in 2025 181,088
Estimated living today 81036,000
Median age today 1965
Peak year 20191927
Best rank 3,130th girls152nd girls
Rank in 2025 6,325th283rd
First recorded 19151880
Girls / boys 1,218 / 085,556 / 470

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 Rosies alive today are over 65; half the Rosaleens are over 19. That is 46 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 Rosaleen Rosie
England and Wales 5236,895
Scotland 343,081
Ireland 1,1171,488

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: Rosaleen and Rosie.