Humanverse

Rosanna vs Rosemary

American parents have registered 163,523 Rosemarys since 1880, against 14,642 Rosannas. Rosemary is still ahead, with 1,222 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Rosanna against Rosemary, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Rosanna Rosemary

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 146 years in which either name was published, Rosemary for 129 years and Rosanna for 17 years. The lead changed hands 5 times.

Side by side

  Rosanna Rosemary
Total US births 14,642163,523
Most in one year 4924,542
Babies in 2025 581,222
Estimated living today 11,00090,000
Median age today 4567
Peak year 19821947
Best rank 438th girls80th girls
Rank in 2025 2,895th251st
First recorded 18801882
Girls / boys 14,636 / 6163,165 / 358

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 Rosemarys alive today are over 67; half the Rosannas are over 45. That is 22 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 Rosanna Rosemary
England and Wales 1,8182,301
Italy 2,740298
Ireland 3721,676
France 825460
Scotland 126732
Northern Ireland 2231

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: Rosanna and Rosemary.