Royce
- Pronunciation
- [Royce]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Famous.
- Origin
- German
About the Name Royce
Royce descends from the Old Germanic surname Royss, meaning "famous" or possibly from the Old French royse referring to the king's son (related to roi, king). The name first appears as an English surname referring to those of noble lineage, particularly common in Welsh and English border regions.
The name's overwhelming modern cultural anchor is the iconic British luxury car brand Rolls-Royce (founded 1906 by Charles Rolls and Frederick Henry Royce — using Royce as a surname). The Rolls-Royce brand has been continuously associated with luxury, prestige, and engineering excellence for over a century, making the Royce surname one of the most-iconic in international automotive culture.
Notable bearers include American basketball player Royce White; American actor Royce Mann; and the contemporary fictional Royce of various contemporary novels. The name's transition from surname to American first name accelerated through the 1990s and 2000s, riding the broader American taste for surname-style first names alongside Carter, Cooper, and Mason. Royce's American climb is recent: the name climbed from outside the US top 1000 in 2000 to the US top 300 boys' rank by 2014 and the top 300 since. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the surname-style sophistication, the in-built Rolls-Royce luxury cultural anchor, and the compact one-syllable structure with the distinctive R-Y-S consonant rhythm. The name reads as both classical-British and contemporary American. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — the rare Roy (back-end shortening, a popular standalone name on its own) and Roycy each occasionally appear; the alternate spellings Royce and Royse have their own SSA tracking. International variants are minimal since the name's first-name use is essentially American.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Royce
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Royce by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2021 with 809 boys named Royce (boy rank #392 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #500 for boys (606 US births). That's 108 places below its 2021 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 Royce 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 Royce the strongest states are Montana, Hawaii, Louisiana.
Strongest boys-name states
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Maryland | #618 | 77 |
| 2 | Tennessee | #616 | 94 |
| 3 | North Carolina | #609 | 141 |
| 4 | Alabama | #567 | 84 |
| 5 | New York | #563 | 262 |
| 6 | Illinois | #561 | 178 |
| 7 | Massachusetts | #539 | 77 |
| 8 | Kentucky | #533 | 70 |
| 9 | Virginia | #532 | 117 |
| 10 | Pennsylvania | #529 | 180 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Royce in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Looking for names like Royce?
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 Royce to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Royce against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).