Rowan vs Rowe

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Rowan Rowe

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 105 years in which either name was published, Rowan for 94 years and Rowe for 11 years. The lead changed hands 9 times.

• 1914–1919 Rowe ahead
• 1920–1921 Rowan ahead
• 1922–1923 Rowe ahead
• 1924 Rowan ahead
• 1925 Rowe ahead
• 1926–1931 Rowan ahead
• 1932 Rowe ahead
• 1933–1934 Rowan ahead
• 1935–1936 Rowe ahead
• 1937–2025 Rowan ahead

Side by side

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 Rowans alive today are over 6; half the Rowes are over 4. That is 2 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.

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

• Rowan vs Rowen
• Rowan vs Rowena
• Rowan vs Rowdy
• Rowan vs Rowland
• Rowan vs Rowyn
• Rowe vs Rowen
• Rowe vs Rowena
• Rowe vs Rowdy