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Jakai vs Jake

American parents have registered 129,539 Jakes since 1880, against 4,265 Jakais. Jake is still ahead, with 682 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jakai against Jake, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jakai Jake

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Jake has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Jakai had 519 and Jake had 682.

Side by side

  Jakai Jake
Total US births 4,265129,539
Most in one year 5194,487
Babies in 2025 519682
Estimated living today 4,200115,000
Median age today 623
Peak year 20252004
Best rank 569th boys98th boys
Rank in 2025 569th457th
First recorded 19941880
Girls / boys 206 / 4,059217 / 129,322

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Jakes alive today are over 23; half the Jakais are over 6. That is 17 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Jakai Jake
England and Wales 1467,109

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Jakai and Jake.