Kobe
About 23,126 American babies have been named Kobe since 1989, most of them around 2001. In 2025 it ranked 518th. About 23,000 Kobes are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 16.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Kobe boys named Kobe
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 23,126
- Estimated living today
- 23,000
- Median age today
- 16
- Peak year
- 2001
- Best rank
- 222nd
- Rank in 2025
- 518th
- First recorded
- 1989
- Girls / boys
- 613 / 22,513
How old the living Kobes are
born that year still alive today
Of the 23,126 babies given the name since 1989, about 23,000 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 13,000 of them are children and 0 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2009 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 Kobes
- Kobe Bryant (1978–2020)American basketball player
- Kobe Tai (born 1972)American pornographic actress
- Kobe Goossens (born 1996)Belgian cyclist
- Kobe Bufkin (born 2003)American basketball player
- Kobe Brown (born 2000)American basketball player
People named Kobe with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Kobe is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Kobe is most concentrated in Nevada (3.1×), Hawaii (2.3×), Utah (1.9×), Oklahoma (1.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2001
The most popular boys’ names the year Kobe peaked:
Kobe elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Belgium boys | Kobe | 5,550 | 13th |
| England and Wales boys | Kobe | 2,427 | 205th |
| Scotland boys | Kobe | 154 | 233rd |
| Northern Ireland boys | Kobe | 74 | 166th |
| Ireland boys | Kobe | 58 | 402nd |
| France boys | Kobe | 25 | 6,459th |
| Switzerland boys | Kobe | 12 | 1,598th |
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.
Kobe: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Kobe | 7 | 0.001% | 1,469th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Kobe | 3 | 0.001% | 761st |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Kobe | 2 | 0.003% | 186th |
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.
Kobe: rank by region
In 2025, Kobe was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Kobe | 80 | 67 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Kobe appears in the lists for Province of West Flanders (57th), Province of Limburg (64th), Province of East Flanders (69th), Province of Flemish Brabant (86th) and Province of Antwerp (127th).
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.
Kobe 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Kobe | — | 7 |
A count of people on a register – 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
Kobe 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.