Roswell
A name of Anglo-Saxon origin meaning "horse-stud village".
Name Census estimates that about 430 living Americans carry the first name Roswell. The name is used almost exclusively for boys. The average person named Roswell today is around 59 years old, and the year with the single highest number of Roswell births was 1919 (48 babies).
This page is the full Name Census profile for Roswell. Below you will find a gender breakdown showing how the name splits between male and female registrations, a year-by-year popularity chart stretching back to 1880, decade-level totals, the top US states for this name, its meaning and etymology, and a set of frequently asked questions with data-backed answers.
People living today
430
~ 1 in 797,103 Americans
Peak year
1919
48 babies that year
Average age
59
years old
2024 SSA rank
#8,173
Tracked since 1880
Popularity
Roswell: popularity over time
The SSA tracks Roswell from the 1880s through to the 2020s, spanning 15 decades of birth certificate data. The biggest single decade for the name was the 1920s, with 302 total registrations. Usage has dropped considerably from its 1920s peak. The most recent decade brought in only a fraction of the registrations that the name once attracted.
Babies born per year
Decades
Roswell by decade
The table below breaks the full SSA timeline into ten-year windows. Each row shows how many male and female babies were given the name Roswell during that decade, along with a combined total. This is useful for spotting eras where the name surged or retreated.
Geography
Where Roswells live
The SSA's state-level files cover 5 states and territories. New York, Georgia, Michigan recorded the most babies named Roswell, while Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan recorded the fewest. The average across all reporting states is about 39 registrations each.
Origin
Meaning and history of Roswell
The name Roswell is a masculine given name of English origin, derived from the Old English words "ros" meaning "horse" and "well" meaning "spring" or "stream". It is believed to have originated in the late Anglo-Saxon period, around the 9th or 10th century, as a surname denoting someone who lived near a horse-watering place.
As a first name, Roswell gained popularity in the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly among the Puritan settlers of New England. One of the earliest recorded bearers of the name was Roswell Saltonstall (1605-1676), a co-founder of the town of Ipswich, Massachusetts, and a prominent figure in the early colonial government of Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Another notable individual with the name Roswell was Roswell Franklin (1773-1844), a prominent American lawyer and politician from Vermont. He served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1825 to 1829.
In the 19th century, Roswell Pettibone Flower (1835-1899) was a prominent American businessman and politician from New York. He served as the Governor of New York from 1892 to 1894.
The name Roswell also appears in religious and literary contexts. Roswell Dwight Hitchcock (1817-1887) was an American theologian and author who served as the president of Amherst College in Massachusetts.
Roswell Park (1852-1914) was an American surgeon and the founder of the world-renowned Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, one of the first comprehensive cancer centers in the United States.
While the name Roswell has declined in popularity in recent decades, it remains a unique and historically significant name with deep roots in English and American history.
People
Roswell + last name combinations
How many people share a full name with Roswell as the first name? Click a combination below to see the estimate, or search any pairing.
Related
Other names starting with R
Other first names starting with R with a similar number of bearers.
FAQ
Roswell: questions and answers
How many people in the U.S. are named Roswell?
Name Census puts the figure at roughly 430 living Americans. We arrive at this by taking every SSA birth registration for Roswell going back to 1880 and adjusting each cohort for expected survival using CDC actuarial life tables. The result is an age-weighted living-bearer count, not a raw birth total. That works out to about 1 in 797,103 US residents.
Is Roswell a common name?
We classify Roswell as "Very Rare". It ranks above 83.1% of all first names in the SSA dataset by living bearers. Across the full history of the data, 1,404 babies have been registered with this name.
When was Roswell most popular?
The single biggest year for Roswell was 1919, when 48 babies received the name. The fact that the average living Roswell is about 59 years old gives you a rough sense of which era contributed the most bearers who are still alive today.
Is Roswell a male name?
Yes, 100.0% of people registered as Roswell in the SSA data are male. You can see the full per-sex comparison in the gender distribution section above, which includes the latest year rank, birth count, and peak year for each sex.
Where does this data come from?
First-name figures come from the Social Security Administration's national baby name files, which cover every name on a birth certificate from 1880 to 2024. Living-bearer estimates layer in CDC actuarial life tables broken out by sex to account for mortality. The population baseline (342,754,338) is the Census Bureau's latest national estimate. You can read the full calculation on our methodology page.