Humanverse

Roman vs Romelo

American parents have registered 105,131 Romans since 1880, against 1,127 Romelos. Roman is still ahead, with 6,185 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Roman against Romelo, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Roman Romelo

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

Roman has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1882 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1997, when Roman had 739 and Romelo had 47.

Side by side

  Roman Romelo
Total US births 105,1311,127
Most in one year 6,18555
Babies in 2025 6,18545
Estimated living today 97,0001,100
Median age today 1012
Peak year 20252021
Best rank 42nd boys2,439th boys
Rank in 2025 42nd2,798th
First recorded 18821994
Girls / boys 478 / 104,6530 / 1,127

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 Romelos alive today are over 12; half the Romans are over 10. 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 Roman Romelo
England and Wales 18,0336

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: Roman and Romelo.