Jakob
About 31,959 American babies have been named Jakob since 1957, most of them around 2001. In 2025 it ranked 1,370th. About 31,000 Jakobs are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 22.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Jakob
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 31,959
- Estimated living today
- 31,000
- Median age today
- 22
- Peak year
- 2001
- Best rank
- 172nd
- Rank in 2025
- 1,370th
- First recorded
- 1957
How old the living Jakobs are
born that year still alive today
Of the 31,959 babies given the name since 1957, about 31,000 are alive — 98 in every hundred. Roughly 9,500 of them are children and 14 are 65 or over. 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 Jakobs
- Jakob Böhme (1575–1624)German Christian mystic and theologian
- Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen (1622–1676)German writer
- Jakob Roggeveen (1659–1729)Dutch Pacific Ocean explorer
- Jakob Wassermann (1873–1934)German writer
- Jakob Steiner (1796–1863)Swiss mathematician
- Jakob Asserson Ingebrigtsen (born 2000)Norwegian middle- and long-distance runner
- Jakob Fugger (1459–1526)German merchant
- Jakob Hurt (1839–1907)Estonian ethnologist, folklorist and linguist
People named Jakob with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Jakob is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Jakob is most concentrated in Nevada (2.6×), Oregon (2.0×), Arizona (2.0×), Washington (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2001
The most popular boys’ names the year Jakob peaked:
Jakob elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austria boys | Jakob | 21,356 | 3rd |
| Norway boys | Jakob | 7,708 | 6th |
| Denmark boys | Jakob | 2,784 | 9th |
| England and Wales boys | Jakob | 2,097 | 388th |
| Italy boys | Jakob | 1,026 | — |
| Switzerland boys | Jakob | 916 | 156th |
| Belgium boys | Jakob | 661 | 317th |
| Poland boys | Jakob | 464 birth registrations | 177th |
| Scotland boys | Jakob | 134 | 308th |
| France boys | Jakob | 90 | 3,314th |
| Ireland boys | Jakob | 56 | 472nd |
| New Zealand boys | Jakob | 46 | 100th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Jakob | 26 | 281st |
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.
Jakob: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Jakob | 878 | 0.071% | 109th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Jakob | 30 | 0.007% | 473rd |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Jakob | 7 | 0.011% | 180th |
| Romansh boys | Switzerland | Jakob | 1 | 0.027% | 8th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Jakob is most concentrated in Basel-Stadt, where 0.23% of children were given it – 85 of them.
Jakob: rank by region
In 2025, Jakob was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Jakob | 589 | 9 |
In 2024, Jakob was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Provincia Autonoma di Bolzano | Jakob | 4 | 37 |
In 2024, Jakob was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Małopolskie | Jakob | 205 | 3 |
In 2023, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Jakob appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (168th) and Province of East Flanders (261st).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Jakob by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 898 | 12th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Jakob 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 | Jakob | 6,513 | 10,729 |
| Finland boys | Jakob | 402 | 955 |
| the Netherlands girls | Jakob | — | 13 |
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
Jakob 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.