Holmes
About 610 American babies have been named Holmes since 1880, most of them around 1915. It has not appeared in the national data since 2024. About 130 Holmeses are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 72.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Holmes
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 610
- Estimated living today
- 130
- Median age today
- 72
- Peak year
- 1915
- Best rank
- 1,372nd
- Rank in 2025
- unranked
- First recorded
- 1880
How old the living Holmeses are
born that year still alive today
Of the 610 babies given the name since 1880, about 130 are alive — 21 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1953 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 a surname
From holme, variant of holm (“islet”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Holmess
- Holmes Herbert (1882–1956)British actor
- Holmes Osborne (born 1947)American actor
- Carlos Holmes Trujillo (1951–2021)Colombian lawyer and politician
People named Holmes with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Holmes is most common
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1915
The most popular boys’ names the year Holmes peaked:
Related names
Holmes 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.