Rochester
Boys' nameMeaning not yet documented
Rochester has been given to 463 babies in the U.S. since 1914. It was used fewer than 5 times in 2025, so it doesn't appear in the latest year's list — today it's a genuinely uncommon pick. Its peak year was 1944, with 22 recorded.
Babies named Rochester, 1971
1 in 572,000
Rochester over time, 1880–2025
Based on births in the U.S. Babies given the name each year. Hover the chart — or focus it and use the arrow keys — for any year. Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.
How common is Rochester?
Rochester had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 1971, the last year it was published.
- Among all babies, 1971
- 1 in 572,000
- 6 of 3,432,187 births
- Among boys only
- 1 in 295,000
- <0.01% of boys
- Rank, 1971
- Unranked
- Fewer than 5 uses
- Coin-flip room size
- 396,503 kids
- Even odds of a second one
Where Rochester sits on the popularity scale
Chance at least one other child shares the name
If the other children were drawn at random from the 1971 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.
Put another way: gather 396,503 children born in 1971 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Rochester. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.
When Rochesters were born
Half of everyone ever recorded as Rochester was born before 1944 — so the typical Rochester is around 81 today.
- Biggest decade
- 1940s
- 32.0% of all use
- Born in the last 25 years
- 42.1%
- Spread across generations
- Recorded since 1950
- 154
- People you could plausibly meet
1940s — 32.0% of all recorded uses (148).
Is Rochester rising or falling?
Rank movement and count movement can disagree — the number of distinct names in use keeps growing, so a name holding a steady count still slides down the list. Both are shown.
- Rank vs 1 year ago
- —
- Not ranked then
- Rank vs 5 years ago
- New entry
- Not ranked then
- Rank vs 10 years ago
- —
- Not ranked then
- Births vs 10 years ago
- —
- Not published both years
- Share of its own peak
- 0%
- Peak was 1944 (22)
- Years since peak
- 81
- Years
- Year-to-year steadiness
- Volatile
- 25.9% average annual change
Spellings of Rochester
Rochester is not the most common spelling — Chester is, with 99.6% against Rochester's 0.38%.
- Chester99.6%121,474
- Rochester0.38%463
Grouped by closeness of spelling (up to two letter changes), same sex, with a floor on all-time use. It catches Sophia/Sofia and Aiden/Ayden, and misses spellings that sound alike but look different, like Sean and Shawn.
Where Rochester is used
Across 1910–2025, Rochester was most concentrated in Mississippi — about 1 in 100,000 boys, against 1 in 484,466 across all states with data. It was least common in Georgia (1 in —).
Most concentrated
- 1Mississippi1 in 100,000
- 2Alabama1 in —
- 3Georgia1 in —
Shading is the share of that state's recorded boys given this name, not the raw count — otherwise the map would just show which states are biggest. Unshaded states have no published records for this period. U.S. birth records suppress state-year counts below 5; state counts therefore don't add up to the national total. Every state links to its full rankings. Rochester has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.
Rochester by the numbers
The raw record for each sex the name is used for.
Names similar to Rochester
Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.
Sibling names for Rochester
Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.