Ames
Ames reached its high-water mark in 2023 at number 1,754, and has been recorded 1,865 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 1,753rd. About 1,600 Ameses are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 9.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Ames boys named Ames
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,865
- Estimated living today
- 1,600
- Median age today
- 9
- Peak year
- 2023
- Best rank
- 1,754th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,753rd
- First recorded
- 1913
- Girls / boys
- 10 / 1,855
How old the living Ameses are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,865 babies given the name since 1913, about 1,600 are alive — 84 in every hundred. Roughly 1,100 of them are children and 120 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2016 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
From the +.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Where Ames is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Ames is most concentrated in Minnesota (7.4×), California (3.1×), Texas (2.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2023
The most popular boys’ names the year Ames peaked:
Related names
Ames 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.