Humanverse

Rosella vs Rosemary

American parents have registered 163,523 Rosemarys since 1880, against 15,995 Rosellas. Rosemary is still ahead, with 1,222 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Rosella 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

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Rosemary for 117 years and Rosella for 29 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Rosella Rosemary
Total US births 15,995163,523
Most in one year 4354,542
Babies in 2025 781,222
Estimated living today 4,60090,000
Median age today 6667
Peak year 19241947
Best rank 320th girls80th girls
Rank in 2025 2,326th251st
First recorded 18801882
Girls / boys 15,990 / 5163,165 / 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.

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 Rosella Rosemary
England and Wales 1732,301
Ireland 31,676
France 315460

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: Rosella and Rosemary.