Humanverse

Jerimiah vs Jerry

American parents have registered 632,416 Jerrys since 1880, against 5,078 Jerimiahs. Jerry is still ahead, with 262 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jerimiah against Jerry, 1880 to 2025 0 5k 10k 15k 20k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jerimiah Jerry

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

Jerry 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 2010, when Jerimiah had 250 and Jerry had 750.

Side by side

  Jerimiah Jerry
Total US births 5,078632,416
Most in one year 25019,263
Babies in 2025 28262
Estimated living today 4,900367,000
Median age today 2166
Peak year 20101947
Best rank 845th boys20th boys
Rank in 2025 3,848th906th
First recorded 19171880
Girls / boys 0 / 5,07817,314 / 615,102

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 Jerrys alive today are over 66; half the Jerimiahs are over 21. That is 45 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 Jerimiah Jerry
England and Wales 6552

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: Jerimiah and Jerry.