Humanverse

Jakeem vs Jakob

American parents have registered 31,959 Jakobs since 1880, against 1,160 Jakeems. Jakob is still ahead, with 135 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jakeem against Jakob, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jakeem Jakob

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

Jakob has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1957 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2024, when Jakeem had 32 and Jakob had 191.

Side by side

  Jakeem Jakob
Total US births 1,16031,959
Most in one year 592,192
Babies in 2025 18135
Estimated living today 1,10031,000
Median age today 1822
Peak year 20022001
Best rank 1,888th boys172nd boys
Rank in 2025 5,208th1,370th
First recorded 19801957
Girls / boys 0 / 1,1600 / 31,959

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 Jakobs alive today are over 22; half the Jakeems are over 18. That is 4 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 Jakeem Jakob
England and Wales 32,097

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: Jakeem and Jakob.