Roland
The boy's name Roland has been in the national records since 1880, with 101,191 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 607th. About 46,000 Rolands are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 58.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Roland boys named Roland
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 101,191
- Estimated living today
- 46,000
- Median age today
- 58
- Peak year
- 1924
- Best rank
- 98th
- Rank in 2025
- 607th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 362 / 100,829
How old the living Rolands are
born that year still alive today
Of the 101,191 babies given the name since 1880, about 46,000 are alive — 45 in every hundred. Roughly 7,500 of them are children and 17,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1967 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Germanic languages
From Old French, from Frankish *Hrōþiland. Name of a paladin of Charlemagne in medieval French romance.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Rolands
- Roland Barthes (1915–1980)French philosopher and essayist
- Roland Emmerich (born 1955)German filmmaker
- Roland (737–778)Frankish knight
- Roland Garros (1888–1918)Reunionese aviator
- Roland Ratzenberger (1960–1994)Austrian racing driver
- Roland Freisler (1893–1945)German jurist and politician
- Roland Sallai (born 1997)Hungarian association football player
- Roland Joffé (born 1945)English and French film/television director and producer
People named Roland with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Roland is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Roland is most concentrated in Maine (7.6×), New Hampshire (6.9×), Rhode Island (5.4×), Vermont (4.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1924
The most popular boys’ names the year Roland peaked:
Roland elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Roland | 132,480 | 31st |
| Austria boys | Roland | 2,511 | 29th |
| England and Wales boys | Roland | 530 | 871st |
| Poland boys | Roland | 294 birth registrations | 161st |
| Norway boys | Roland | 178 | 365th |
| Ireland boys | Roland | 126 | 169th |
| Switzerland boys | Roland | 87 | 379th |
| Scotland boys | Roland | 58 | 206th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Roland: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Roland | 78 | 0.006% | 289th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Roland | 7 | 0.002% | 642nd |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Roland | 1 | 0.002% | 180th |
| Romansh boys | Switzerland | Roland | 1 | 0.027% | 18th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
Roland: rank by region
In 2024, Roland was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wielkopolskie | Roland | 252 | 2 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Roland among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Roland | 7,327 | 9,808 |
| Finland boys | Roland | 279 | 714 |
| the Netherlands girls | Roland | — | 79 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Roland lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 586 men called Roland were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Roland | 46 | 0.086 | 1,015 |
| Balears, Illes | Roland | 42 | 0.067 | 956 |
| Araba/Álava | Roland | 10 | 0.059 | 1,018 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Roland | 56 | 0.056 | 1,197 |
| Tarragona | Roland | 23 | 0.052 | 1,186 |
| Palmas, Las | Roland | 25 | 0.043 | 1,782 |
Listed in 23 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 29 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Roland against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.