Humanverse

Jim vs Jimena

American parents have registered 153,938 Jims since 1880, against 17,042 Jimenas. But in 2025 it was Jimena that was commoner, 515 babies to 38.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Jim Jimena

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 146 years in which either name was published, Jim for 121 years and Jimena for 25 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Jim Jimena
Total US births 153,93817,042
Most in one year 5,697830
Babies in 2025 38515
Estimated living today 76,00017,000
Median age today 6612
Peak year 19592016
Best rank 70th boys400th girls
Rank in 2025 3,128th578th
First recorded 18801966
Girls / boys 816 / 153,12217,034 / 8

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 Jims alive today are over 66; half the Jimenas are over 12. That is 54 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 Jim Jimena
France 2,96020
England and Wales 39827
Switzerland 30338

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: Jim and Jimena.