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Rosalita vs Rosemary

American parents have registered 163,523 Rosemarys since 1880, against 325 Rosalitas. Rosemary is still ahead, with 1,222 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Rosalita against Rosemary, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Rosalita Rosemary

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

Rosemary 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 Rosalita had 6 and Rosemary had 339.

Side by side

  Rosalita Rosemary
Total US births 325163,523
Most in one year 364,542
Babies in 2025 81,222
Estimated living today 26090,000
Median age today 6767
Peak year 19441947
Best rank 1,340th girls80th girls
Rank in 2025 10,917th251st
First recorded 19431882
Girls / boys 325 / 0163,165 / 358

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.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Rosalita Rosemary
England and Wales 32,301

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: Rosalita and Rosemary.