Humanverse

Rowen vs Rowyn

American parents have registered 10,816 Rowens since 1880, against 4,125 Rowyns. Rowen is still ahead, with 772 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Rowen against Rowyn, 1880 to 2025 0 250 500 750 1k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Rowen Rowyn

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

Rowen has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1944 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Rowen had 772 and Rowyn had 480.

Side by side

  Rowen Rowyn
Total US births 10,8164,125
Most in one year 892480
Babies in 2025 772480
Estimated living today 11,0004,100
Median age today 75
Peak year 20242025
Best rank 445th boys694th girls
Rank in 2025 486th694th
First recorded 19441999
Girls / boys 2,647 / 8,1693,326 / 799

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 Rowens alive today are over 7; half the Rowyns are over 5. That is 2 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 Rowen Rowyn
England and Wales 65028
Scotland 3410
Ireland 93

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: Rowen and Rowyn.