Abe
Abe reached its high-water mark in 1917 at number 324, and has been recorded 9,694 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 2,207th. About 3,300 Abes are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 35.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Abe
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 9,694
- Estimated living today
- 3,300
- Median age today
- 35
- Peak year
- 1917
- Best rank
- 324th
- Rank in 2025
- 2,207th
- First recorded
- 1880
How old the living Abes are
born that year still alive today
Of the 9,694 babies given the name since 1880, about 3,300 are alive — 34 in every hundred. Roughly 1,100 of them are children and 790 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1990 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Hebrew
A shortening from Abraham. In the slang sense for money, refers to the picture of Abraham Lincoln on the currency.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Abes
- Abe Vigoda (1921–2016)American actor
- Abe Uta (born 2000)Japanese judoka
- Abe Lenstra (1920–1985)Dutch footballer
- Abe Masahiro (1819–1857)Japanese politician
- Abe Wiersma (born 1994)Dutch rower
- Abe Saperstein (1902–1966)American sports executive and basketball coach
- Abe Fortas (1910–1982)United States Supreme Court Justice
- Abe Cunningham (born 1973)American drummer
People named Abe with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Abe is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Abe is most concentrated in New York (5.5×), Mississippi (3.4×), Alabama (2.4×), Louisiana (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1917
The most popular boys’ names the year Abe peaked:
Abe elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Abe | 209 | 1,812th |
| Scotland boys | Abe | 6 | 733rd |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Related names
Abe against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.