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Rowan vs Rowen

American parents have registered 72,853 Rowans since 1880, against 10,816 Rowens. Rowan is still ahead, with 6,452 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Rowan Rowen

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

Rowan has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1916 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1944, when Rowan had 9 and Rowen had 5.

Side by side

  Rowan Rowen
Total US births 72,85310,816
Most in one year 6,452892
Babies in 2025 6,452772
Estimated living today 72,00011,000
Median age today 67
Peak year 20252024
Best rank 59th boys445th boys
Rank in 2025 59th486th
First recorded 19161944
Girls / boys 22,225 / 50,6282,647 / 8,169

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 Rowan Rowen
England and Wales 18,136650
Scotland 2,28634
Ireland 1,0639
France 63045
Belgium 34350

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: Rowan and Rowen.