Roy
- Pronunciation
- [Roy]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Regal
- Origin
- French
About the Name Roy
Roy descends from the Old French roi, ultimately from the Latin rex meaning "king" or "royal." An alternate Scottish-Irish etymology connects Roy to the Scottish Gaelic ruadh meaning "red" (referring to red hair) — particularly anchored by the iconic Scottish folk hero Rob Roy MacGregor (Robert Roy MacGregor, 1671–1734, the iconic Scottish outlaw and folk hero, immortalized in Sir Walter Scott's 1817 novel Rob Roy).
Notable bearers include the iconic American singer Roy Orbison (1936–1988, the iconic American singer whose career through the 1950s through the 1980s — including Pretty Woman 1964 — made him one of the foundational figures of 20th-century American rock-and-roll); American basketball player Roy Williams (using Williams as a surname, born 1950, the iconic American basketball coach); American filmmaker Roy Disney (using Disney as a surname, 1893–1971, the American businessman and co-founder of The Walt Disney Company alongside his brother Walt Disney); and the iconic American action hero Roy Rogers (1911–1998, the iconic American singer-cowboy actor).
Roy held a US top-50 boys' rank from 1880 through 1985 — over a century of consistent American popularity. The name has receded slightly since but remains in steady use, currently sitting in the US top 300 boys' rank. The name's appeal is its compact one-syllable register, instantly readable, the in-built distinctive royal etymological register, the strong Roy Orbison and Roy Rogers American cultural anchors, and tonal versatility from rural-American to upwardly-mobile-American. The name reads as both classical-French and contemporary American. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — Roy-bear (the dominant short form, casual and warm) and the rare Royal each occasionally appear; the alternate spellings Roy, Roye, and Roi (French original) have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Le Roi (French original), Rey (Spanish), and the broader related Latin rex family.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Roy
US Popularity History (1880–2025)
Annual US births named Roy by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1947 with 7,560 boys named Roy (boy rank #48 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #525 for boys (570 US births). That's 477 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.
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Where in the US Is Roy Most Popular?
Average boy-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 boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Roy the strongest states are Montana, Idaho, California.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Montana | #213 | 27 |
| 2 | Idaho | #389 | 26 |
| 3 | California | #428 | 747 |
| 4 | Nebraska | #428 | 24 |
| 5 | Nevada | #443 | 42 |
| 6 | Kansas | #472 | 31 |
| 7 | Minnesota | #482 | 110 |
| 8 | Texas | #496 | 586 |
| 9 | Washington | #504 | 118 |
| 10 | Iowa | #505 | 44 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indiana | #759 | 56 |
| 2 | Alabama | #727 | 50 |
| 3 | Maryland | #721 | 55 |
| 4 | Pennsylvania | #688 | 122 |
| 5 | Ohio | #685 | 115 |
| 6 | North Carolina | #665 | 111 |
| 7 | Louisiana | #653 | 65 |
| 8 | Arizona | #650 | 87 |
| 9 | Illinois | #648 | 143 |
| 10 | Missouri | #645 | 81 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Roy in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rey | Regal | Male | French |
Famous People Named Roy
4 notable figures from history and culture who share the name Roy.
- Roy Bean was a judicial officer in Val Verde County, Texas.
- Roy Lichtenstein — Pop Artist (1923)
- Roy Orbison — Rock Singer (1936)
- Roy Rogers — Country Singer (1911)
Looking for names like Roy?
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.
Compare Roy to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Roy against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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