Tennessee
Tennessee is a girl's name that peaked in 2021, when it was the 3,801st most popular in the United States. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 4,878th. About 900 Tennessees are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 9.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Tennessee boys named Tennessee
Girls and boys called Tennessee
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Tennessee crossed from boys to girls in 2017, and has stayed there for 9 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 71% girls, which is roughly where it still is.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 15 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,367
- Estimated living today
- 900
- Median age today
- 9
- Peak year
- 2021
- Best rank
- 3,801st
- Rank in 2025
- 4,878th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 986 / 381
How old the living Tennessees are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,367 babies given the name since 1880, about 900 are alive — 66 in every hundred. Roughly 690 of them are children and 20 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2016 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
From chr ᏔᎾᏏ, believed to mean “winding river”.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Tennessees
- Tennessee Williams (1911–1983)American playwright
- Tennessee Ernie Ford (1919–1991)American recording artist and television host notable for his bass-baritone voice
- Tennessee Claflin (1844–1923)American suffragist
People named Tennessee with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Tennessee is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Tennessee is most concentrated in California (3.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2021
The most popular girls’ names the year Tennessee peaked:
Tennessee elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Tennessee | 255 | 1,845th |
| France boys | Tennessee | 120 | 1,586th |
| England and Wales girls | Tennessee | 36 | 3,015th |
| Belgium girls | Tennessee | 5 | 1,234th |
| England and Wales boys | Tennessee | 3 | 4,647th |
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.
Related names
Tennessee 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.