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Jackson vs Jacoby

American parents have registered 297,998 Jacksons since 1880, against 11,281 Jacobys. Jackson is still ahead, with 6,597 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jackson against Jacoby, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jackson Jacoby

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Jackson has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1983, when Jackson had 275 and Jacoby had 93.

Side by side

  Jackson Jacoby
Total US births 297,99811,281
Most in one year 12,626696
Babies in 2025 6,597126
Estimated living today 286,00011,000
Median age today 1416
Peak year 20132008
Best rank 16th boys422nd boys
Rank in 2025 36th1,425th
First recorded 18801959
Girls / boys 778 / 297,220120 / 11,161

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Jacobys alive today are over 16; half the Jacksons are over 14. That is 2 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Jackson Jacoby
England and Wales 12,078158

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Jackson and Jacoby.