Rosemary
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Herb name; from Latin ros marinus, 'dew of the sea'
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɹəwzməɹi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Rosemary is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country. In Jamaica it is the 33rd most common given name.
- NGNigeria≈1 in 1.1K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 1.4K
- JMJamaica≈1 in 1.7K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Rosemary itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- #558 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 508 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.1K (inferred from the name graph)
≈200,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Nigeria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Rosemarie in PH Philippines, DE Germany, JM Jamaica and Rose-Marie in SE Sweden.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Herb name; from Latin ros marinus, 'dew of the sea'.
Sources 1
- Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Rosemary counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | #254 | ≈200,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Rosemary | 102 |
| PH Philippines | #53 | ≈190,000 est. | ≈1 in 563 | 23K | Rosemarie | 135 |
| US United States | #286 | 112,645 | 1 in 3K | 113K | Rosemary | 508 |
| DE Germany | #259 | ≈65,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Rosemarie | 173 |
| GB United Kingdom | #203 | ≈46,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | 9 | Rosemary | 250 |
| SE Sweden | #261 | 8,407as Rose-Marie | 1 in 1.2K | 8.4K | Rose-Marie | 48 |
| JM Jamaica | #33 | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | — | Rosemarie | 19 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Top 500 First Names in the Philippines (PSA FOI response, tracking; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Rosemary is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In French, English name from the herb rosemary; also read as rose + Mary.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
In English, Dew of the sea; fragrant herb; combination of Rose + Mary
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In English, A shrub, Salvia rosmarinus (formerly Rosmarinus officinalis), that originates from Europe and Asia Minor and produces a fragrant herb used in cooking and perfumes.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In French, Nom anglais composé de rose + mary; parfois rapproché du romarin.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
English: a 19th-century coinage, from the name of the herb (which is from Latin ros mar nus sea dew). It is often also assumed to be a combination of the names ROSE and MARY . Cognate: German, Scandinavian: Rosemarie. Pet forms: English: Rosie. German: Röschen, Romy .
as a word
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Rosemary DeCampb. 1910USAmerican actress (1910–2001)
- Rosemary Murphyb. 1925USGerman-American actress (1925–2014)
- Rosemary Harrisb. 1927GBBritish actress
- Rosemary Clooneyb. 1928USAmerican singer and actress (1928–2002)
- Jean Shrimptonb. 1942GBnot in their usual nameBritish model and actress
- Rosemary Forsythb. 1943CAAmerican actress
- Camilla Parker Bowlesb. 1947GBnot in their usual nameQueen consort of the United Kingdom since 2022
- Rosie Casalsb. 1948USnot in their usual nameUS tennis player
- Rosemary Dunsmoreb. 1953CACanadian actress
- Fran Walshb. 1959NZnot in their usual nameNew Zealand screenwriter and producer
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 81 sources across 46 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 113K | #501 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 1.2K | — |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 231 | #4,722 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 124 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 102 | #501 |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2024 | 9 | #351 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1990 | 5 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2010 | 4 | #366 |
Reference works 3
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What are other forms of the name Rosemary?
- In the etymology graph, Rose, Rosemarie and Rosimeire are forms of the same name in other languages.
- What does the name Rosemary mean, and where does it come from?
- Herb name; from Latin ros marinus, 'dew of the sea'. Recorded by Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular….
- Is Rosemary a male or female name?
- Rosemary is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Rosemary have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 198 thousand people named Rosemary in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rosemary.
- How common is the name Rosemary?
- In the United States, the national register counted 112,645 people named Rosemary in 2020, about 1 in 3.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Rosemary compared with other names?
- In Nigeria, Rosemary is the 254th most common given name of 138,191 given names recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Rosemary?
- A machine transcription gives /ɹəwzməɹi/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Rosemary?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/rosemaryThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Rosemary” — the 254th most common given name in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.