Humanverse

Roy vs Royce

American parents have registered 411,331 Roys since 1880, against 35,662 Royces. But in 2025 it was Royce that was commoner, 626 babies to 570.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Roy Royce

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, Roy for 131 years and Royce for 15 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Roy Royce
Total US births 411,33135,662
Most in one year 7,592857
Babies in 2025 570626
Estimated living today 168,00025,000
Median age today 6426
Peak year 19472021
Best rank 48th boys392nd boys
Rank in 2025 525th499th
First recorded 18801892
Girls / boys 2,693 / 408,6382,508 / 33,154

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 Roys alive today are over 64; half the Royces are over 26. That is 38 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 Roy Royce
Ireland 1,1363
England and Wales 889246
France 82535
Scotland 5893
Poland 482
Northern Ireland 166

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: Roy and Royce.