Royce
Feminine · “from Rohese”
Royce is given to both — 2,508 girls and 33,154 boys since 1880. See Royce as a boy nameSee other names given to both
Royce is a surname that came from a woman's name, which reverses the usual direction of travel. The medieval English name Rohese or Royse — the ancestor of Rose — produced the surname Royce as a matronymic, so a name that reads as a masculine surname is in fact named after somebody's mother. Its American peak on girls is 1945.
How old is the name Royce?
Royce first appears in US birth records in 1915 — 110 years ago. The typical Royce alive today was born around 1957, making them about 68 years old. About 1,900 people named Royce are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Royce most popular?
Royce peaked in 1945, reaching #1003 nationally. Today it ranks #5917, 4,914 places below that high. See the whole 1945 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From hrod heid to Royce
The story of Royce
Rohese arrived in England with the Normans and was one of the most common women's names of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, usually written Royse in the vernacular. Matronymic surnames formed from it — Royce, Royse, Rowse — appear in medieval records. The surname crossed to America and became a first name in the nineteenth-century way, and Rolls-Royce, founded in 1904 and named for its two partners, gave the word a global association with expense. American use as a given name has always been mostly male; the female share rose in the 1940s and again more recently, which is a return to the name's own origin rather than a departure from it.
Meaningscholars disagree
from Rohese, a Norman form of Rose
Rohese or Royse was a common Norman-introduced woman's name in medieval England, and the surname Royce derives from it as a matronymic — a family named for its mother, which was less common than the patronymic pattern but not rare. Rohese itself is Germanic, from hrod, 'fame', and heid, 'kind, sort', and was reinterpreted as the flower Rose only later. A competing derivation makes the surname a patronymic from Roy, 'king'. The matronymic route is the one most surname dictionaries prefer.
How the name formed
- hrod heid
- Rohese
- Royse
- Royce
Related forms: Royse · Rose
Pronouncing Royce
ROYSS
One syllable, rhyming with voice. There is no ambiguity in the spelling and nobody has to be taught it.
Nicknames for Royce
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
- 1915
- Most girls named
- 201774 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1003reached in 1945
- Change vs 2023
- −48.7%20 in 2025, from 39
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.
Royce in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Royse in English — spelling variant
- Rose in English — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Ohio, Texas, California.
Royces among us
people named Royce are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 80,363 born in 2025 was named Royce
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Bernie test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Royce's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Bernie climbed just as high around 1908, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Bernie's path sketches the road Royce is walking now.
Royce 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
Royce beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Royce in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- One syllable and five letters, immediately sayable and spellable.
- Its descent from a woman's name is genuine and reverses the usual assumption.
- It works on either sex, with documented use on both.
- It is far more common on boys and forms will often assume male.
- The car marque is the first association most people make.
- One-syllable names leave a bearer with no nickname in reserve.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Royce
Feminine · #5917 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Royces are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,900 people named Royce are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Royce in 2025?
- Royce ranks #5917 among US girl names in 2025, with 20 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Royce?
- About 1 in every 80,363 US girls born in 2025 was named Royce — 20 in all.
- Will my child share the name Royce with classmates?
- Royce will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Royce
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Elda#5917 · Saloma#5917 · Fawn#5917 · Sarafina#5917 · Jaymie#5917 · Jania#5917 · Kimberlynn#5917 · Patsy#5917
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Royce? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Royce and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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