Jess
Jess reached its high-water mark in 1915 at number 193, and has been recorded 25,550 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 5,208th. About 12,000 Jesses are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 49.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Jess boys named Jess
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 25,550
- Estimated living today
- 12,000
- Median age today
- 49
- Peak year
- 1915
- Best rank
- 193rd
- Rank in 2025
- 5,208th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 487 / 25,063
How old the living Jesses are
born that year still alive today
Of the 25,550 babies given the name since 1880, about 12,000 are alive — 49 in every hundred. Roughly 610 of them are children and 3,100 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1976 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 Jesss
- Jess Glynne (born 1989)British singer
- Jess Wade (born 1988)British physicist, Wikimedian, and campaigner for gender inclusion in science
- Jess Harnell (born 1963)American voice actor
- Jess Willard (1881–1968)American boxer
- Jess Park (born 2001)English association football player
- Jess Fishlock (born 1987)Welsh footballer
- Jess Thorup (born 1970)Danish association football player and manager
- Jess Phillips (born 1981)British politician
People named Jess with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Jess is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Jess is most concentrated in Oklahoma (5.1×), California (2.3×), Colorado (2.3×), West Virginia (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1915
The most popular boys’ names the year Jess peaked:
Jess elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Jess | 493 | 769th |
| France boys | Jess | 370 | 1,795th |
| Scotland girls | Jess | 200 | 258th |
| England and Wales boys | Jess | 156 | 869th |
| Ireland girls | Jess | 65 | 355th |
| Belgium boys | Jess | 33 | 578th |
| France girls | Jess | 30 | 6,909th |
| Belgium girls | Jess | 17 | 1,098th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Jess | 6 | 407th |
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.
Jess: rank by region
In 2015, Jess was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Jess | 670 | 7 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 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.
Related names
Jess 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.