Humanverse

Rose vs Rosslyn

American parents have registered 502,704 Roses since 1880, against 790 Rosslyns. Rose is still ahead, with 2,386 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Rose against Rosslyn, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Rose Rosslyn

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

Rose 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 2011, when Rose had 1,101 and Rosslyn had 25.

Side by side

  Rose Rosslyn
Total US births 502,704790
Most in one year 9,82133
Babies in 2025 2,3867
Estimated living today 197,000730
Median age today 6617
Peak year 19172015
Best rank 16th girls4,295th girls
Rank in 2025 114th11,932nd
First recorded 18801940
Girls / boys 500,586 / 2,118790 / 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 Roses alive today are over 66; half the Rosslyns are over 17. That is 49 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 Rose Rosslyn
England and Wales 18,7097
Scotland 1,70535

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: Rose and Rosslyn.