Roger
About 443,830 American babies have been named Roger since 1880, most of them around 1953. In 2025 it ranked 832nd. About 257,000 Rogers are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 66.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Roger boys named Roger
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 443,830
- Estimated living today
- 257,000
- Median age today
- 66
- Peak year
- 1953
- Best rank
- 31st
- Rank in 2025
- 832nd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 1,688 / 442,142
How old the living Rogers are
born that year still alive today
Of the 443,830 babies given the name since 1880, about 257,000 are alive — 58 in every hundred. Roughly 7,600 of them are children and 139,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1959 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
From Old French Rogier, from the Frankish equivalent of Old English Hrōþgār (see Hroðgar), from Proto-Germanic *Hrōþigaizaz (“fame-spear”). Compare also Rutger.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Rogers
- Roger Federer (born 1981)Swiss tennis player
- Roger Martin du Gard (1881–1958)French writer
- Roger Ebert (1942–2013)American film critic and author
- Roger Moore (1927–2017)English actor
- Roger Bacon (1220–1292)English polymath, philosopher and friar (c.1219/20–c.1292)
- Roger Penrose (born 1931)English mathematical physicist, recreational mathematician and philosopher
- Roger Waters (born 1943)English musician, co-founder of Pink Floyd
- Roger Taylor (born 1949)English musician, drummer of Queen
People named Roger with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Roger is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Roger is most concentrated in West Virginia (2.9×), Maine (2.7×), South Dakota (2.5×), Vermont (2.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1953
The most popular boys’ names the year Roger peaked:
Roger elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Roger | 423,575 | 5th |
| Norway boys | Roger | 9,380 | 20th |
| New Zealand boys | Roger | 2,612 | 39th |
| Spain boys | Roger | 1,381 | 98th |
| Ireland boys | Roger | 613 | 99th |
| England and Wales boys | Roger | 358 | 694th |
| Switzerland boys | Roger | 232 | 266th |
| France girls | Roger | 185 | 822nd |
| Scotland boys | Roger | 170 | 121st |
| Poland boys | Roger | 112 birth registrations | 314th |
| Belgium boys | Roger | 61 | 799th |
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.
Roger: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Roger | 198 | 0.016% | 185th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Roger | 23 | 0.005% | 387th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Roger | 11 | 0.017% | 103rd |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Roger is most concentrated in Bern, where 0.02% of children were given it – 42 of them.
Roger: rank by region
In 2025, Roger was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Roger | 536 | 10 |
In 2020, Roger was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Roger | 10 | 1 |
In 2019, Roger was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wielkopolskie | Roger | 222 | 2 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Roger appears in the lists for Province of East Flanders (264th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Roger 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 | Roger | 4,540 | 6,497 |
| Finland boys | Roger | 788 | 1,654 |
| the Netherlands girls | Roger | — | 346 |
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.
Where Roger lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 16,886 men called Roger were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lleida | Roger | 1,316 | 5.589 | 28 |
| Tarragona | Roger | 1,663 | 3.794 | 54 |
| Barcelona | Roger | 10,688 | 3.665 | 58 |
| Girona | Roger | 1,524 | 3.660 | 52 |
| Balears, Illes | Roger | 224 | 0.360 | 269 |
| Castellón/Castelló | Roger | 105 | 0.336 | 301 |
Listed in 43 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 9 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Roger 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.