Jacobus
The boy's name Jacobus has been in the national records since 1979, with 142 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 12,008th. About 140 Jacobuses are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 22.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Jacobus
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 142
- Estimated living today
- 140
- Median age today
- 22
- Peak year
- 1997
- Best rank
- 6,618th
- Rank in 2025
- 12,008th
- First recorded
- 1979
How old the living Jacobuses are
born that year still alive today
Of the 142 babies given the name since 1979, about 140 are alive — 98 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2003 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 Jacobuss
- Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff (1852–1911)Dutch physical and organic chemist
- Jacobus de Voragine (1228–1298)Italian Dominican friar, archbishop of Genoa and author
- Jacobus Kapteyn (1851–1922)Dutch astronomer, best known for his extensive studies of the Milky Way and as the first discoverer of evidence for galactic rotation
- Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609)Dutch theologian, inspirator of Arminianism, champion of tolerance
- Jacobus Johannes Fouché (1898–1980)South African politician
- Jacobus Gallus (1550–1591)Slovenian Renaissance composer
- Jacobus van Egmond (1908–1969)Dutch racing cyclist
- Jacobus Golius (1596–1667)Dutch mathematician and orientalist
People named Jacobus with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Names of 1997
The most popular boys’ names the year Jacobus peaked:
Jacobus elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Jacobus | 20 | 3,744th |
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.
Jacobus among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Jacobus | 61,061 | 182,290 |
| the Netherlands girls | Jacobus | 9 | 1,479 |
| Finland boys | Jacobus | — | 16 |
Among girls in the Netherlands this is mostly a middle name: of the 1,479 who carry it, 9 go by it.
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Jacobus 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.