Roy

176,166 people in America carry this name — ranked #314 of 923.

Its American moment came before the war.

Say it ROY

1 syllable · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

R OY1 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 176,166 2020 Census
  • Rank #314 Common
  • Per 100,000 58.3 about 1 in 1,881 people
  • As a surname 54,089 ranked #606 the other way round

Where Roy comes from and what it means

Celtic in origin, reading literally as “red”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

How often Roy has been given

408,572 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1947, with 7,595 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40s 50 60 70 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1940s.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

What goes well after Roy

One syllable, so a longer middle name gives the whole a rhythm.

Better avoided

  • Roy Robert — same opening
  • Roy Richard — same opening
  • Roy Ronald — same opening

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

A name and a surname

Roy is carried in front of the comma and behind it — thousands of Americans have it as a surname too.

Is Roy a boy's or a girl's name?

99.8% men
391 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Names with the same rhythm as Roy

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 1 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

The likeliest full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

The states where Roy is most common

In West Virginia the name is given 2.2 times as often as it is across the country.

  • West Virginia ×2.2
  • Mississippi ×2.0
  • Arkansas ×1.9
  • Hawaii ×1.9
  • Kentucky ×1.8

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

Who has this name today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 71.2%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 12.7%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 8.5%
  • Two or more races — 2.8%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 3.8%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 1.0%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Try it Birth Plan Worksheet

Tick what matters, print it, hand it over. Nothing is stored anywhere.

Open Birth Plan Worksheet on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Celtic origin