The name Rodney was originally an English surname, derived from a place name meaning ‘Hroda’s island’. Hroda was an Old English given name meaning ‘fame’.
Rodney is a male first name. In very rare cases it is also used for girls.
The name Rodney isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Rodney ranks 715. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 2 were named Rodney. In the entire USA, approximately 241,725 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Rodney. That is 0.07 % of all living Americans.
The name Rodney was originally an English surname, derived from a place name meaning ‘Hroda’s island’. Hroda was an Old English given name meaning ‘fame’.
Rodney is considered a... strong and classic name, that had its peak of popularity in the 1960s.
Appearing throughout the time in the United States, the name Rodney is a staple in the country: Boys have been given the name Rodney for more than 140 years, according to official U.S. naming statistics. Rodney is therefore one of only 442 boys’ names that have been given every year since 1880. Even beyond that, Rodney is a very special name that peaked in popularity some time ago in the 20th century. Placed at #33 Rodney easily made it into the top 100 boys' names of our SmartGenius statistics for male first names and has never been more popular than back in 1965.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Rodney was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
Wherever you go, wherever you live – there’s a good chance to meet Rodney. Because: There are men and boys named Rodney in every state in the USA. This may sound quite unspectacular at first, but in fact, of the nearly 50,000 different male first names that occur in the USA, just 386 are recorded in each individual state, so the name Rodney is definitely something very special. In some regions it even makes it into the top 100 of the most popular male first names, for example in Hawaii, where Rodney ranks on position 69. The greatest chance of meeting Rodney, however, is in North Dakota, where one in 283 boys and men bears this beautiful name – that is far above average – in the entire USA it is only one in 691 men and boys and in Rhode Island, where the name is least represented in relation to the population, you even have to ask an average of 2,570 men and boys for their name before you once get Rodney as an answer.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter R is quite common as an initial letter for boys’ names. To be precise, 5.2% of all boys' names in the US begin with this letter. The most common first letters of boys' names, by the way, are J, A and D.
With six letters, the name Rodney is of average length. In fact, 28% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly six letters. 24% of all first names are shorter, while 48% have seven letters or more. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
Therefore: As 5.2% of all boys' names start with R, this initial letter occurs much more often than all 26 letters on average. And maybe interesting to know: of all the names that begin with an R, Robert is the most common.
If your name is Rodney and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Rodney, you can simply say:
Rocket
Orange
Dinosaur
Nut
Elephant
Yoyo
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Rodney
Rodney
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
R
O
D
N
E
Y
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
R
O
D
N
E
Y
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Rodney sounds like this:
