Herb
The boy's name Herb has been in the national records since 1884, with 2,007 births to its name. It has not appeared in the national data since 1993. About 960 Herbs are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 66.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Herb
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 2,007
- Estimated living today
- 960
- Median age today
- 66
- Peak year
- 1947
- Best rank
- 831st
- Rank in 2025
- unranked
- First recorded
- 1884
How old the living Herbs are
born that year still alive today
Of the 2,007 babies given the name since 1884, about 960 are alive — 48 in every hundred. Roughly 0 of them are children and 570 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1959 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.
Notable Herbs
- Herb Alpert (born 1935)American trumpeter and recording industry executive
- Herb Elliott (born 1938)Australian middle distance runner
- Herb Kohl (1935–2023)American politician
- Herb McKenley (1922–2007)Jamaican Sprinter
- Herb Ellis (1921–2010)American jazz guitarist
- Herb Drury (1895–1965)American ice hockey player
- Herb Jeffries (1913–2014)American singer and actor
- Herb Edelman (1933–1996)American actor
People named Herb with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Herb is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Herb is most concentrated in California (3.9×), Washington (3.9×), Ohio (2.7×), Illinois (2.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1947
The most popular boys’ names the year Herb peaked:
Herb elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Herb | 24 | 4,023rd |
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
Herb 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.