Roderick
Roderick reached its high-water mark in 1971 at number 223, and has been recorded 47,446 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 1,743rd. About 37,000 Rodericks are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 50.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Roderick boys named Roderick
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 47,446
- Estimated living today
- 37,000
- Median age today
- 50
- Peak year
- 1971
- Best rank
- 223rd
- Rank in 2025
- 1,743rd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 263 / 47,183
How old the living Rodericks are
born that year still alive today
Of the 47,446 babies given the name since 1880, about 37,000 are alive — 78 in every hundred. Roughly 2,800 of them are children and 6,500 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1975 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Germanic languages
Medieval English name from Proto-Germanic *Hrōþirīks, revived after Walter Scott used it in a poem in 1811, where it is a translation of its Spanish cognate Rodrigo. Roderick is also used to anglicize Scottish Ruairidh and Welsh Rhydderch.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Rodericks
- Roderick MacKinnon (born 1956)American neuroscientist
- Roderick Murchison, 1st Baronet (1792–1871)British geologist
- Roderick Miller (born 1992)Panamanian footballer
- Roderick (born 1991)Portuguese association football player
- Roderick Strong (born 1983)American professional wrestler
- Roderick Chisholm (1916–1999)American philosopher and logician
- Roderick Thorp (1936–1999)American writer
- Roderick Rijnders (1941–2018)Dutch rower
People named Roderick with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Roderick is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Roderick is most concentrated in Alabama (4.6×), Mississippi (3.4×), Louisiana (3.2×), Georgia (2.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1971
The most popular boys’ names the year Roderick peaked:
Roderick elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scotland boys | Roderick | 679 | 85th |
| Ireland boys | Roderick | 218 | 157th |
| England and Wales boys | Roderick | 150 | 1,040th |
| France boys | Roderick | 125 | 1,735th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Roderick among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Roderick | 1,386 | 2,265 |
| Finland boys | Roderick | 7 | 19 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Roderick against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.