Humanverse

Rock vs Rocky

American parents have registered 29,134 Rockys since 1880, against 2,681 Rocks. Rocky is still ahead, with 563 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Rock Rocky

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 113 years in which either name was published, Rocky for 112 years and Rock for 1 year. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Rock Rocky
Total US births 2,68129,134
Most in one year 155920
Babies in 2025 17563
Estimated living today 2,10024,000
Median age today 5746
Peak year 19571957
Best rank 618th boys252nd boys
Rank in 2025 5,399th568th
First recorded 19131913
Girls / boys 0 / 2,681447 / 28,687

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 Rocks alive today are over 57; half the Rockys are over 46. That is 11 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 Rock Rocky
England and Wales 13999
France 210330

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: Rock and Rocky.