Humanverse

Jakie vs Jakob

American parents have registered 31,959 Jakobs since 1880, against 776 Jakies. Jakob is still ahead, with 135 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Jakie 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

Of the 111 years in which either name was published, Jakob for 58 years and Jakie for 53 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Jakie Jakob
Total US births 77631,959
Most in one year 282,192
Babies in 2025 under 5135
Estimated living today 26031,000
Median age today 7122
Peak year 19302001
Best rank 1,368th boys172nd boys
Rank in 2025 unranked1,370th
First recorded 19131957
Girls / boys 17 / 7590 / 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 Jakies alive today are over 71; half the Jakobs are over 22. That is 49 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

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

Country Jakie Jakob
France 25590

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: Jakie and Jakob.