Rosemary: Meaning of Baby Name Rosemary

About the Name Rosemary

Rosemary descends from the Latin rosmarinus, composed of ros (dew) and marinus (of the sea) — yielding "dew of the sea," referring to the herb that grows wild along Mediterranean coastlines. The English name combines the imagery of Rose (the flower) and Mary (the Virgin Mary), giving Rosemary additional Christian-Marian-Catholic religious anchoring.

The name's overwhelming literary anchor is the title character of Ira Levin's 1967 novel Rosemary's Baby (and its 1968 Roman Polanski film adaptation, starring Mia Farrow as Rosemary Woodhouse) — one of the most-iconic horror novels of mid-20th-century American literature. Other notable bearers include American actress Rosemary Clooney (1928–2002, the iconic American singer-actress and aunt of George Clooney); American author Rosemary Sutcliff; and President John F. Kennedy's intellectually disabled sister Rosemary Kennedy (1918–2005).

Rosemary held a US top-100 girls' rank from 1928 through 1950 — over two decades of mid-20th-century popularity. After a long mid-late 20th-century quiet period, the name has been climbing again through the 2010s and 2020s as part of the broader vintage-revival wave alongside Hazel, Daphne, and Eloise. Rosemary climbed back into the US top 300 girls' rank by 2018 and the top 300 since. The name's appeal is its layered Latin-Christian-Marian-literary pedigree combined with four flowing syllables — the in-built dew-of-the-sea botanical register, the strong Rosemary Clooney mid-20th-century American cultural anchor and Rosemary's Baby horror-literary anchor, and tonal warmth distinctive to vintage-revival names. Common nicknames Rose (the dominant warm short form, also a popular standalone name on its own), Rosie, Rosa, Mary (back-end shortening), Romey, and the rare Rosemarie each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Rosemary, Rosemarie, Rosemaree, and Rose-Mary have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Rosmarina (Italian), Romarin (French masculine), and the original Latin rosmarinus.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.

Quick Facts About Rosemary

62

Latin baby names in our dictionary

46

Latin female names

100

8-letter R-names in our dictionary

259

R-female names total

1926–2025

years of US SSA records (46 total)

78,026

total US births named Rosemary (all years)

US Popularity History (1926–2025)

🔥 Rising fast: Rosemary climbed 191 places in the US girls ranking over the last 5 years (#442 in 2020 → #251 in 2025).

Annual US births named Rosemary by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1947 with 4,542 girls named Rosemary (girl rank #80 that year).

Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #251 for girls (1,222 US births). That's 171 places below its 1947 peak.

Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.

Where in the US Is Rosemary Most Popular?

Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Rosemary the strongest states are New Hampshire, District of Columbia, North Dakota.

Strongest girls-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	New Hampshire	#194	27
2	District of Columbia	#206	44
3	North Dakota	#221	16
4	Maine	#228	22
5	Oregon	#239	148
6	Tennessee	#270	277
7	Utah	#282	152
8	Wisconsin	#296	182
9	Nebraska	#299	52
10	Missouri	#301	218

Weakest girls-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Florida	#662	247
2	New Jersey	#626	105
3	New York	#544	300
4	Texas	#526	596
5	Arizona	#508	122
6	Nevada	#494	37
7	Georgia	#488	215
8	South Carolina	#460	95
9	Oklahoma	#457	93
10	Louisiana	#443	116

Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Rosemary in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.

Variant Forms

Name	Meaning	Gender	Origin
Rosemaria	Bitter	Female	French
Rosemarie	Bitter	Female	Spanish

Looking for names like Rosemary?

A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.

See all names like Rosemary →

Compare Rosemary to Other Popular Names

Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Rosemary against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).

Rosemary vs Olivia 210,124 births since 2014

Rosemary vs Emma 202,477 births since 2014

Rosemary vs Sophia 169,709 births since 2014

Rosemary vs Isabella 158,431 births since 2014

Rosemary vs Ava 157,356 births since 2014

Rosemary vs Charlotte 151,872 births since 2014

Rosemary vs Mia 149,779 births since 2014

Rosemary vs Amelia 142,728 births since 2014

Compare to a different name →