Rory
The boy's name Rory has been in the national records since 1933, with 49,421 births to its name. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 199th. About 46,000 Rorys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 13.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Rory boys named Rory
Girls and boys called Rory
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 13,580 girls and 35,841 boys in all, and in 2025 the split was 1,332 to 1,768.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 80 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 49,421
- Estimated living today
- 46,000
- Median age today
- 13
- Peak year
- 2025
- Best rank
- 199th
- Rank in 2025
- 199th
- First recorded
- 1933
- Girls / boys
- 13,580 / 35,841
How old the living Rorys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 49,421 babies given the name since 1933, about 46,000 are alive — 94 in every hundred. Roughly 26,000 of them are children and 3,500 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2012 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
Anglicized form of Scottish Gaelic Ruairidh and Irish Ruairí (“red-haired king”), from Old Irish Ruaidrí (“red king”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Rorys
- Rory Gallagher (1948–1995)Irish guitarist
- Rory McIlroy (born 1989)Northern Irish professional golfer
- Rory Culkin (born 1989)American actor
- Rory Cochrane (born 1972)American actor
- Rory Delap (born 1976)Irish association football player
- Rory McCann (born 1969)Scottish actor
- Rory Kinnear (born 1978)English actor
- Rory Stewart (born 1973)British independent politician
People named Rory with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Rory is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Rory is most concentrated in Washington (2.1×), Colorado (2.0×), Minnesota (1.8×), Massachusetts (1.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2025
The most popular boys’ names the year Rory peaked:
Rory elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Rory | 23,630 | 17th |
| Scotland boys | Rory | 7,037 | 3rd |
| Ireland boys | Rory | 6,508 | 42nd |
| Northern Ireland boys | Rory | 1,712 | 35th |
| New Zealand boys | Rory | 220 | 84th |
| France boys | Rory | 195 | 2,325th |
| England and Wales girls | Rory | 152 | 1,271st |
| Switzerland boys | Rory | 41 | 1,000th |
| Belgium girls | Rory | 34 | 936th |
| France girls | Rory | 20 | 2,847th |
| Scotland girls | Rory | 14 | 482nd |
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.
Rory: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Rory | 26 | 0.002% | 1,116th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Rory | 14 | 0.003% | 523rd |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Rory | 1 | 0.002% | 194th |
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.
Rory: rank by region
In 2025, Rory was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Rory | 452 | 5 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 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.
Rory by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 2 | 552nd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Rory 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 | Rory | 20 | 25 |
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.
Related names
Rory 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.