Tess
Tess is a girl's name that peaked in 1992, when it was the 465th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 1,777th. About 14,000 Tesses are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 25.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Tess
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 14,770
- Estimated living today
- 14,000
- Median age today
- 25
- Peak year
- 1992
- Best rank
- 465th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,777th
- First recorded
- 1889
How old the living Tesses are
born that year still alive today
Of the 14,770 babies given the name since 1889, about 14,000 are alive — 95 in every hundred. Roughly 3,800 of them are children and 130 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2000 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 Tesss
- Tess Gerritsen (born 1953)American novelist
- Tess Harper (born 1950)American actress
- Tess Lieder (born 1993)Dutch handball player
- Tess Ledeux (born 2001)French freestyle skier
- Tess Coady (born 2000)Australian snowboarder
- Tess Madgen (born 1990)Australian basketball player
- Tess Daly (born 1969)British television presenter
- Tess Merkel (born 1970)Swedish singer
People named Tess with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Tess is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Tess is most concentrated in Utah (4.1×), Massachusetts (2.8×), Colorado (2.3×), Connecticut (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1992
The most popular girls’ names the year Tess peaked:
Tess elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Tess | 9,315 | 123rd |
| Belgium girls | Tess | 2,131 | 67th |
| England and Wales girls | Tess | 1,496 | 438th |
| Ireland girls | Tess | 585 | 133rd |
| Switzerland girls | Tess | 296 | 310th |
| Scotland girls | Tess | 181 | 306th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Tess | 167 | 154th |
| Poland girls | Tess | 6 birth registrations | 548th |
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.
Tess: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Tess | 43 | 0.003% | 480th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Tess | 251 | 0.058% | 83rd |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Tess | 2 | 0.003% | 181st |
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, Tess is most concentrated in Neuchâtel, where 0.08% of children were given it – 29 of them.
Tess: rank by region
In 2025, Tess was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Tess | 262 | 21 |
| Wallonia | Tess | 452 | 5 |
| Brussels | Tess | 244 | 5 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Tess appears in the lists for Province of Limburg (94th), Province of Antwerp (182nd) and Brussels-Capital Region (244th).
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.
Tess by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 2 | 551st |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Tess 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 girls | Tess | 9,516 | 10,221 |
| Finland girls | Tess | 21 | 24 |
| the Netherlands boys | Tess | 5 | 10 |
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
Tess 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.