Roger

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in English: From the Norman personal name Roger/Rogier, of Germanic origin meaning 'fame-spear'. Also from Irish Gaelic Mac Ruaidhri

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Roger is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Switzerland it is the 40th most common given name.

rarermore common
  • SESweden1 in 279(measured from records)
  • CHSwitzerland≈1 in 351
  • NZNew Zealand≈1 in 571

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

China (inferred from the name graph)

≈1,900,000 people, est.

#312 (measured from records)

of 15M given names

3 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
599 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 279 (inferred from the name graph)

Sweden

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

RogerLatin(measured from records)
רוגרHebrew(measured from records)
রোগেরBengali(measured from records)

Locally spelled רוג'ר in FR France.

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)

From the Norman personal name Roger/Rogier, of Germanic origin meaning 'fame-spear'. Also from Irish Gaelic Mac Ruaidhri.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.

How Roger is read(measured from records)

Roger is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • English70%

    From the Norman personal name Roger/Rogier, of Germanic origin meaning 'fame-spear'. Also from Irish Gaelic Mac Ruaidhri.

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

    from OFr Roger/Rogier, OG Ro(d)ger ‘fame-spear’; first attested Rogerus marescalcus 1066 DB (Ess)

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

    From Welsh Roser/Rosser < Roger; earliest citation 1292: Cadugan ap Roser.

    as a nameWelsh Surnames

  • Spanish9.0%

    from Germanic *hrod- 'fame' + *gari- 'spear'

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

  • French8.5%

    a male given name, from Old French Rogier (itself from Old Frankish), which was borrowed into English as Roger

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Roger 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.

Where Roger is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈1,900,000 est.≈1 in 718—Roger82
US United States#144294,7261 in 1.1K294KRoger599
PH Philippines#130≈160,000 est.≈1 in 662—Roger145
GB United Kingdom#109≈100,000 est.≈1 in 64138Roger317
FR France—≈74,000 est.≈1 in 915424Kרוג'ר13
CA Canada#121≈59,000 est.≈1 in 6373Roger282
SE Sweden#13036,5151 in 27937KRoger128
CH Switzerland#40≈24,000 est.≈1 in 351147Roger147
NZ New Zealand#85≈8,600 est.≈1 in 571—Roger145

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; INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Roger is also recorded as 8 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name27 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Peru, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese

    Also written Rogér, Röger, Rogêr, Rögër, Rôger

  • a separate name4 spellings in the group

    Also written Róger, Röger, Rogér

  • Polish given name45 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, United States, Czechia, United Kingdom

    Languages: Polish, Russian, Czech

    Also written Rodger, Роджер, Рогер, Rodzher, Rogér

  • Indonesian given name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, United States, Philippines, Malaysia

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay, Malagasy

    Also written Róger, Rogér

  • Finnish given name6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Sweden, United Kingdom, Finland

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Rõgèr, Rõgêr, Róger, Röger

  • Greek given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Greece, United States, United Kingdom, Cyprus

    Also written Rotzer, Ροτζερ

  • Italian given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Italy, United Kingdom, San Marino

    Also written Róger, Rogér, Röger

  • Thai given name18 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Thailand, United States, Laos, United Kingdom

    Languages: Thai, Lao

    Also written โรเจอร์, Roche, โรเช่, โรเช, โรเจอ

95 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Roger is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Irish, Germanic ‘fame spear’; used in Ireland to anglicise Rory; borne by patriot Roger Casement.

    as a nameIrish first names

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)

100012001400160018002000Ruggero II, b. 1095Roger Bacon, b. 1220Roger Martin du Gard, b. 1881Roger Garaudy, b. 1913Roger Moore, b. 1927Roger Vadim, b. 1928Roger Penrose, b. 1931Roger Bruce Myerson, b. 1951Hervé Renard, b. 1968Roger Federer, b. 1981

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 132 sources across 67 countries.

Official registers attesting Roger
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)2023424K#2,968
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020294K#174
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—37K#113
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)202019K—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020339#174
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)2025297—
CA CanadaStatistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01)202417—
CA CanadaAlberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender20243#1,147

Reference works 8

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 does the name Roger mean, and where does it come from?
From the Norman personal name Roger/Rogier, of Germanic origin meaning 'fame-spear'. Also from Irish Gaelic Mac Ruaidhri. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
Is Roger a male or female name?
Roger is a male 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.
What are other forms of the name Roger?
In the etymology graph, Rodger, Rüdiger and Rogério are forms of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Roger have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 1.9 million people named Roger in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled roger.
Where is Roger most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Roger is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 279 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Roger?
In the United States, the national register counted 294,726 people named Roger in 2020, about 1 in 1.1 thousand residents.
How common is Roger compared with other names?
In Switzerland, Roger is the 40th most common given name of 38,907 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Roger?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/roger

The 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, “Roger” — the 40th most common given name in Switzerland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Roger parses inside a full name →