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Royal vs Royalty

American parents have registered 24,394 Royals since 1880, against 7,751 Royaltys. Royal is still ahead, with 765 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Royal against Royalty, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Royal Royalty

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

Royal has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2019, when Royal had 1,004 and Royalty had 980.

Side by side

  Royal Royalty
Total US births 24,3947,751
Most in one year 1,217980
Babies in 2025 765375
Estimated living today 18,0007,700
Median age today 86
Peak year 20212019
Best rank 369th boys339th girls
Rank in 2025 476th782nd
First recorded 18802001
Girls / boys 4,322 / 20,0727,225 / 526

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 Royals alive today are over 8; half the Royaltys are over 6. 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 Royal Royalty
England and Wales 13977
France 2015

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: Royal and Royalty.