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Rolando vs Rolf

American parents have registered 24,516 Rolandos since 1880, against 3,103 Rolfs. Rolando is still ahead, with 135 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Rolando against Rolf, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Rolando Rolf

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 114 years in which either name was published, Rolando for 80 years and Rolf for 34 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Rolando Rolf
Total US births 24,5163,103
Most in one year 47996
Babies in 2025 1355
Estimated living today 22,0001,700
Median age today 3564
Peak year 19941960
Best rank 463rd boys775th boys
Rank in 2025 1,370th12,008th
First recorded 19161912
Girls / boys 78 / 24,4380 / 3,103

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 Rolfs alive today are over 64; half the Rolandos are over 35. That is 29 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 Rolando Rolf
France 220315

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: Rolando and Rolf.