Humanverse

Rosalin vs Ross

American parents have registered 82,293 Rosses since 1880, against 908 Rosalins. Ross is still ahead, with 122 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Rosalin against Ross, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Rosalin Ross

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

Ross 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 2019, when Rosalin had 17 and Ross had 134.

Side by side

  Rosalin Ross
Total US births 90882,293
Most in one year 191,898
Babies in 2025 15122
Estimated living today 72056,000
Median age today 3943
Peak year 20221985
Best rank 6,229th girls147th boys
Rank in 2025 7,133rd1,459th
First recorded 19141880
Girls / boys 908 / 0421 / 81,872

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 Rosses alive today are over 43; half the Rosalins are over 39. That is 4 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 Rosalin Ross
England and Wales 137,755

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: Rosalin and Ross.