Rolland
Masculine · “Famous throughout the land”
Rolland is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 9,868 boys against 5 girls since 1880.
Rolland is Roland with a doubled l, which is the French surname spelling rather than the French given-name one. Both go back to the same Germanic compound: fame and land, the man whose renown reaches across a country.
How old is the name Rolland?
Rolland was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Rolland alive today was born around 1933, making them about 92 years old. About 3,300 people named Rolland are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Rolland most popular?
Rolland peaked in 1928, reaching #352 nationally. Today it ranks #5608, 5,256 places below that high. See the whole 1928 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Hrodland to Rolland
The story of Rolland
Roland died in the rearguard at Roncevaux in 778 and the Chanson de Roland, composed three centuries later, made him the model of the Christian knight; the poem's fame carried the name across Europe. The surname Rolland is French and Breton and traveled with French emigration, and Romain Rolland, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915 and whose pacifism during the First World War made him a European figure, is its most consequential bearer. American use of Rolland peaked in 1928, in the same period as Roland's own American height, and the doubled spelling has been the rarer of the two throughout.
Meaning
Famous throughout the land
From the Germanic Hrodland, from hrod, fame or renown, and land. The reading is settled and both elements are transparent. French keeps Roland as the given name and Rolland as a surname spelling; American records use both for the given name, and the doubled l carries no separate meaning.
How the name formed
- Hrodland
- Roland
- Rolland
Related forms: Roland · Rolland · Orlando · Rolando · Roland
Pronouncing Rolland
ROH-lund
Two syllables, stress on the first. French Rolland is roh-LAHN with the weight at the back, a nasal vowel and no d sound at all.
Nicknames for Rolland
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
- 1880
- Most boys named
- 1927232 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #352reached in 1928
- Change vs 2022
- −20.0%16 in 2025, from 20
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.
Rolland in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Roland in French — related form
- Rolland in French — same name
- Orlando in Italian — related form
- Rolando in Spanish — related form
- Roland in German — related form
Rollands among us
people named Rolland are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 106,755 born in 2025 was named Rolland
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Rolland
- #5608
- Rolland on the 2025 chart
- #517
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Rolland went to 16 boys in 2025, but Roland is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 482, which makes it the 517th most-given boys’ name of the year — 5,091 places above the chart.
- Roland466
- Rolland16
About 1 boy in 3,544 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 106,755 for Rolland itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Helen test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Rolland's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Helen climbed just as high around 1903, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Helen's path sketches the road Rolland is walking now.
Rolland sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Rolland beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Rolland in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The Germanic meaning is settled and unusually good.
- It carries one of the foundational figures of European literature.
- Rollie works as a warm short form.
- Roland is the standard spelling and will be written for it.
- The doubled l is a surname spelling rather than a given-name one in French.
- It is strongly dated to the first half of the twentieth century.
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Rolland
Masculine · #5608 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Rollands are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 3,300 people named Rolland are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Rolland?
- Rolland is one of 2 recorded spellings. Roland is the more common one — 466 births in 2025 against 16 for Rolland.
- How popular is the name Rolland in 2025?
- Rolland ranks #5608 among US boy names in 2025, with 16 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Rolland?
- About 1 in every 106,755 US boys born in 2025 was named Rolland — 16 in all.
- Will my child share the name Rolland with classmates?
- Rolland will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Rolland
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Llewellyn#5608 · Arlie#5608 · Gerrit#5608 · Vinson#5608 · Georgie#5608 · Wally#5608 · Berl#5608 · Webb#5608
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Rolland? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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