Humanverse

Jesi vs Jessie

American parents have registered 281,367 Jessies since 1880, against 600 Jesis. Jessie is still ahead, with 456 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jesi against Jessie, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jesi Jessie

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

Jessie 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 1996, when Jesi had 29 and Jessie had 1,855.

Side by side

  Jesi Jessie
Total US births 600281,367
Most in one year 295,003
Babies in 2025 5456
Estimated living today 590115,000
Median age today 3143
Peak year 19891918
Best rank 3,784th girls75th girls
Rank in 2025 14,942nd823rd
First recorded 19771880
Girls / boys 562 / 38170,036 / 111,331

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 Jessies alive today are over 43; half the Jesis are over 31. That is 12 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 Jesi Jessie
England and Wales 45,718

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: Jesi and Jessie.