Humanverse

Jessamine vs Jessi

American parents have registered 7,874 Jessis since 1880, against 763 Jessamines. Jessi is still ahead, with 59 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jessamine against Jessi, 1880 to 2025 0 80 160 240 320 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jessamine Jessi

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 89 years in which either name was published, Jessi for 62 years and Jessamine for 27 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Jessamine Jessi
Total US births 7637,874
Most in one year 17317
Babies in 2025 1059
Estimated living today 5207,700
Median age today 2531
Peak year 19971981
Best rank 5,626th girls646th girls
Rank in 2025 9,457th3,100th
First recorded 18891959
Girls / boys 763 / 06,553 / 1,321

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 Jessis alive today are over 31; half the Jessamines are over 25. That is 6 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 Jessamine Jessi
England and Wales 35115

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: Jessamine and Jessi.