Roman
Roman is a boy's name that peaked in 2025, when it was the 42nd most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 42nd. About 97,000 Romans are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 10.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Roman boys named Roman
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 105,131
- Estimated living today
- 97,000
- Median age today
- 10
- Peak year
- 2025
- Best rank
- 42nd
- Rank in 2025
- 42nd
- First recorded
- 1882
- Girls / boys
- 478 / 104,653
How old the living Romans are
born that year still alive today
Of the 105,131 babies given the name since 1882, about 97,000 are alive — 92 in every hundred. Roughly 69,000 of them are children and 1,900 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2015 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 Latin
From Old French Romain, from Latin Rōmānus.. Displaced native Romish.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Romans
- Roman Polanski (born 1933)French-Polish filmmaker
- Roman Herzog (1934–2017)former President of the Federal Republic of Germany
- Roman Jakobson (1896–1982)Russian linguist
- Roman Abramovich (born 1966)Russian-Israeli oligarch and politician
- Juan Román Riquelme (born 1978)Argentine association football player
- Roman Pavlyuchenko (born 1981)Russian footballer
- Roman Reigns (born 1985)American professional wrestler
- Roman Weidenfeller (born 1980)German association football player
People named Roman with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Roman is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Roman is most concentrated in Nevada (3.0×), Arizona (2.6×), New Mexico (1.9×), California (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2025
The most popular boys’ names the year Roman peaked:
Roman elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Roman | 18,029 | 23rd |
| France boys | Roman +1 spelling | 10,000 | 171st |
| Austria boys | Roman | 3,254 | 30th |
| Poland boys | Roman | 2,249 birth registrations | 105th |
| Switzerland boys | Roman | 1,377 | 65th |
| Scotland boys | Roman | 1,128 | 31st |
| New Zealand boys | Roman | 853 | 43rd |
| Norway boys | Roman | 794 | 195th |
| Belgium boys | Roman | 740 | 296th |
| Ireland boys | Roman | 338 | 142nd |
| Northern Ireland boys | Roman | 149 | 108th |
| France girls | Roman | 5 | 4,981st |
| England and Wales girls | Roman | 4 | 4,763rd |
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.
Roman: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Roman | 1,065 | 0.086% | 50th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Roman | 302 | 0.069% | 104th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Roman | 5 | 0.008% | 180th |
| Romansh boys | Switzerland | Roman | 5 | 0.134% | 3rd |
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, Roman is most concentrated in Appenzell Ausserrhoden, where 0.22% of children were given it – 26 of them.
Roman: rank by region
In 2025, Roman was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Roman | 268 | 22 |
| Wallonia | Roman | 235 | 12 |
In 2025, Roman was given 2 times or more in 14 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dolnośląskie | Roman | 92 | 15 |
| Kujawsko-Pomorskie | Roman | 109 | 6 |
| Lubuskie | Roman | 99 | 4 |
| Łódzkie | Roman | 90 | 11 |
| Małopolskie | Roman | 118 | 12 |
| Mazowieckie | Roman | 101 | 27 |
| Podkarpackie | Roman | 158 | 2 |
| Podlaskie | Roman | 101 | 4 |
| Pomorskie | Roman | 118 | 9 |
| Śląskie | Roman | 126 | 10 |
| Świętokrzyskie | Roman | 100 | 2 |
| Warmińsko-Mazurskie | Roman | 136 | 2 |
| Wielkopolskie | Roman | 106 | 16 |
| Zachodniopomorskie | Roman | 117 | 5 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Roman appears in the lists for Province of Hainaut (174th), Province of Liège (183rd), Province of East Flanders (226th) and Province of Antwerp (251st).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, 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.
Roman by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 62 | 199th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Roman 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Roman | 448 | 508 |
A count of people on a register – 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 Roman lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 13,902 men called Roman 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alicante/Alacant | Roman | 952 | 0.947 | 134 |
| Salamanca | Roman | 150 | 0.943 | 151 |
| Cuenca | Roman | 94 | 0.931 | 142 |
| Soria | Roman | 40 | 0.873 | 142 |
| Cantabria | Roman | 243 | 0.845 | 154 |
| Lleida | Roman | 199 | 0.845 | 160 |
Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Roman 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.