Rolanda
Feminine · “famous land”
Rolanda is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 3,386 girls against 31 boys since 1880.
Italian took Roland and swapped its first two letters, and the result was Orlando — one of the most famous names in European literature, and the same name as the one on this page. Rolanda is the feminine of the original, and the whole family goes back to a knight who may never have existed.
How old is the name Rolanda?
Rolanda first appears in US birth records in 1944 — 81 years ago. The typical Rolanda alive today was born around 1973, making them about 52 years old. About 3,200 people named Rolanda are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Rolanda most popular?
Rolanda peaked in 1971, reaching #798 nationally. See the whole 1971 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Hrodland to Rolanda
The story of Rolanda
Roland gets one line in a Frankish chronicle and everything else is later. What the chronicle records is a rearguard ambushed in a Pyrenean pass; what three centuries of poetry made of it is a hero, a horn, a sword and a betrayal. Italy took the story and renamed him Orlando by shifting the r, and built its own enormous poems around that name. Germany did something different again: from the Middle Ages, towns across the north put up large stone statues of a figure called Roland in their market squares, and the statue was a legal object — it announced that the town held market rights and its own justice. Several are still standing.
Meaning
famous land
The Germanic compound joins a word for fame to one for land or territory. The ending here is an ordinary Romance feminine and adds nothing to the sense.
How the name formed
- Hrodland
- Roland
- Rolanda
Related forms: Orlanda · Rolanda · Rolande · Rolanda
Pronouncing Rolanda
roh-LAN-duh
Three syllables with the weight in the middle. Spanish and Italian put it in the same place, which is unusual for a name that crosses languages.
Nicknames for Rolanda
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1944
- Most girls named
- 1971176 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #798reached in 1971
- Change vs 2010
- −14.3%6 in 2015, from 7
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Rolanda in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Orlanda in Italian — same name
- Rolanda in Spanish — same name
- Rolande in French — same name
- Rolanda in German — same name
Rolandas among us
people named Rolanda are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Rolanda sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- It is a standing name in Spanish, Italian, French and German.
- The literature behind it is enormous and easy to point a child at.
- Every sound in it is straightforward in English.
- The spelling is recorded for boys as well as girls in the United States, which the ending does not predict.
- Rolonda and Rolanda are both in the record and will be confused.
- It reads as a name of the middle of the twentieth century in America.
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What they receive
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Rolanda
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Rolandas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 3,200 people named Rolanda are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Rolanda in 2025?
- Rolanda is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Rolanda with classmates?
- Rolanda will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More R names
The most-given names starting with R, all years combined.
Ruth#173 · Rebecca#349 · Rachel#250 · Rose#114 · Ruby#64 · Robin#704 · Rita#1285 · Rhonda#6116
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Rolanda? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Rolanda and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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