Rowena
Rowena reached its high-water mark in 1917 at number 429, and has been recorded 10,526 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 4,352nd. About 4,500 Rowenas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 63.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Rowena
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 10,526
- Estimated living today
- 4,500
- Median age today
- 63
- Peak year
- 1917
- Best rank
- 429th
- Rank in 2025
- 4,352nd
- First recorded
- 1880
How old the living Rowenas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 10,526 babies given the name since 1880, about 4,500 are alive — 42 in every hundred. Roughly 430 of them are children and 2,100 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1962 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 the name of the daughter of Hengist and wife of Vortigern in Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th century pseudohistorical Latin work Historia regum Britanniae. There have been attempts to connect it to some unattested Old English - or Common Brittonic name, but without any real evidence. It was revived after Walter Scott used it in his novel Ivanhoe (1819). Some places are named after Lady Rowena in the novel.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Rowenas
- Rowena Morrill (1944–2021)American artist
- Rowena Meredith (born 1995)Australian rower
- Rowena Webster (born 1987)Australian female water polo player
People named Rowena with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Rowena is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Rowena is most concentrated in Hawaii (18.2×), Maine (5.9×), Oklahoma (3.6×), Kansas (2.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1917
The most popular girls’ names the year Rowena peaked:
Rowena elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Rowena | 389 | 571st |
| Ireland girls | Rowena | 198 | 245th |
| Scotland girls | Rowena | 88 | 337th |
| France girls | Rowena | 65 | 4,033rd |
| Switzerland girls | Rowena | 30 | 861st |
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.
Rowena: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Rowena | 28 | 0.002% | 651st |
| French girls | Switzerland | Rowena | 1 | 0.000% | 901st |
| Romansh girls | Switzerland | Rowena | 1 | 0.027% | 15th |
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.
Rowena 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 girls | Rowena | 1,616 | 2,214 |
| Finland girls | Rowena | 11 | 16 |
| the Netherlands boys | Rowena | — | 12 |
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 Rowena lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 189 women called Rowena were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Madrid | Rowena | 84 | 0.023 | 1,998 |
| Balears, Illes | Rowena | 11 | 0.018 | 2,727 |
| Málaga | Rowena | 15 | 0.016 | 2,524 |
| Barcelona | Rowena | 47 | 0.015 | 2,699 |
| Bizkaia | Rowena | 5 | 0.008 | 3,524 |
Listed in 5 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 47 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
Rowena 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.