Humanverse

Jessalynn vs Jesse

American parents have registered 444,920 Jesses since 1880, against 998 Jessalynns. Jesse is still ahead, with 2,074 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jessalynn against Jesse, 1880 to 2025 0 3k 6k 9k 12k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jessalynn Jesse

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

Jesse 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 2016, when Jessalynn had 47 and Jesse had 2,377.

Side by side

  Jessalynn Jesse
Total US births 998444,920
Most in one year 4710,823
Babies in 2025 132,074
Estimated living today 980333,000
Median age today 1737
Peak year 20161981
Best rank 3,379th girls37th boys
Rank in 2025 7,885th184th
First recorded 19751880
Girls / boys 998 / 012,492 / 432,428

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 Jesses alive today are over 37; half the Jessalynns are over 17. That is 20 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 Jessalynn Jesse
France 151,315

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: Jessalynn and Jesse.