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NameCurve
Boys' name · 456,262 recorded births

Jesse

#184 in the US in 2025

Where Jesse stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#184boys’ names · US 2025

Jesse was the 184th most registered boys' name in the United States in 2025, on 2,002 births.

peak 1981 · 10,443188019532025

Its moment was 1981, when 10,443 babies were given it.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

#184US rank, 2025 (boys)
2,002US births in 2025
#26its best US rank, in 1882
1981peak year — 10,443 births
432,428US births since 1880
4,654NZ births since 1974
6,385E&W births, 2019–2025
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Jesse's figures are worked out

  1. Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
  2. Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
  3. The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
  4. The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
  5. A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Jesse was under the floor in no year of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000

Full methodology →

Jesse in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.0296593
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Jesse in the United States, 1880–2025
boysgirls

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been steady.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Jesse in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Jesse has been registered 4,654 times since 1974, peaking in 1990 with 269 births. It ranked #162 for boys in 2025 on 30 births.

1900192019401960198020002020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 10-BIRTH FLOOR0.05581116
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 10-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Jesse in New Zealand, 1900–2025
boysgirls

SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Jesse in England & Wales

In England and Wales, Jesse was registered 6,385 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2025 with 980 births. It ranked #51 for boys in 2025 on 980 births. Across those years it has been rising.

20200.0179358
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 3-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Jesse in England and Wales, 2019–2025
boysgirls

Seven years is a window, not a history. Unlike the American and New Zealand series this one cannot show you a name's arrival or its long decline — ONS publishes the full list only from 2019. England and Wales only: Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and are not counted here.

SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Decade by decade in the US

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1880#28569
1890#33576
1900#50536
1910#60590
1920#792,420
1930#942,035
1940#932,205
1950#1142,607
1960#1502,374
1970#1192,768
1980#458,374
1990#488,977
2000#904,485
2010#1243,280
2020#2031,887

<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.

Where in the United States

The states that registered Jesse most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.

StateBirths
California54,864
Texas46,892
New York18,025
Pennsylvania15,843
North Carolina14,814
Illinois13,867
Ohio13,791
Florida13,714
Georgia12,653
Michigan10,930

Questions about Jesse

How popular is the name Jesse?

Jesse ranked #184 for boys in the United States in 2025, on 2,002 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Jesse most popular?

Jesse peaked in 1981, when 10,443 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Jesse rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all boys' births, Jesse has been steady between 2016 and 2025.

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 1981, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.

SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026

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Published by

Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.