Roy
Roy is a boy's name that peaked in 1947, when it was the 48th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 525th. About 168,000 Roys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 64.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Roy boys named Roy
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 411,331
- Estimated living today
- 168,000
- Median age today
- 64
- Peak year
- 1947
- Best rank
- 48th
- Rank in 2025
- 525th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 2,693 / 408,638
How old the living Roys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 411,331 babies given the name since 1880, about 168,000 are alive — 41 in every hundred. Roughly 9,200 of them are children and 84,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1961 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 Scottish Gaelic
From various sources:.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Roys
- Roy J. Glauber (1925–2018)American theoretical physicist
- Ben Roy Mottelson (1926–2022)Danish-American nuclear physicist
- Roy Orbison (1936–1988)American musician
- Roy Keane (born 1971)Irish football manager
- Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997)American pop artist
- Roy Scheider (1932–2008)American actor
- Roy Hodgson (born 1947)English football manager
- Roy Makaay (born 1975)Dutch footballer
People named Roy with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Roy is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Roy is most concentrated in Arkansas (2.3×), West Virginia (2.3×), Oklahoma (2.2×), Kentucky (2.1×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1947
The most popular boys’ names the year Roy peaked:
Roy elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Norway boys | Roy | 7,897 | 29th |
| Ireland boys | Roy | 1,136 | 103rd |
| England and Wales boys | Roy | 889 | 399th |
| France boys | Roy | 825 | 1,310th |
| Scotland boys | Roy | 589 | 91st |
| Belgium boys | Roy | 488 | 224th |
| Switzerland boys | Roy | 243 | 334th |
| New Zealand boys | Roy | 101 | 88th |
| Poland boys | Roy | 48 birth registrations | 241st |
| Northern Ireland boys | Roy | 16 | 265th |
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.
Roy: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Roy | 210 | 0.017% | 240th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Roy | 15 | 0.003% | 434th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Roy | 17 | 0.026% | 128th |
| Romansh boys | Switzerland | Roy | 1 | 0.027% | 8th |
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, Roy is most concentrated in Aargau, where 0.02% of children were given it – 28 of them.
Roy: rank by region
In 2024, Roy was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Roy | 768 | 6 |
In 2024, Roy was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mazowieckie | Roy | 324 | 2 |
In 2018, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Roy appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (339th).
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.
Roy by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 4 | 580th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Roy 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 | Roy | 19,813 | 22,551 |
| Finland boys | Roy | 653 | 882 |
| the Netherlands girls | Roy | — | 183 |
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 Roy lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 709 men called Roy 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 | Roy | 86 | 0.086 | 859 |
| Ourense | Roy | 12 | 0.082 | 679 |
| Málaga | Roy | 59 | 0.067 | 870 |
| Pontevedra | Roy | 25 | 0.055 | 858 |
| Palmas, Las | Roy | 30 | 0.052 | 1,547 |
| Coruña, A | Roy | 28 | 0.051 | 945 |
Listed in 25 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 27 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
Roy 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.