Humanverse

Rosemary vs Rosemond

American parents have registered 163,523 Rosemarys since 1880, against 509 Rosemonds. Rosemary is still ahead, with 1,222 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Rosemary Rosemond

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

Rosemary has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1882 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1902, when Rosemary had 37 and Rosemond had 5.

Side by side

  Rosemary Rosemond
Total US births 163,523509
Most in one year 4,54226
Babies in 2025 1,222under 5
Estimated living today 90,00070
Median age today 6782
Peak year 19471920
Best rank 80th girls1,626th girls
Rank in 2025 251stunranked
First recorded 18821902
Girls / boys 163,165 / 358491 / 18

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 Rosemonds alive today are over 82; half the Rosemarys are over 67. That is 15 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 Rosemary Rosemond
France 46050

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: Rosemary and Rosemond.