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Jake vs Jakub

American parents have registered 129,539 Jakes since 1880, against 3,067 Jakubs. Jake is still ahead, with 682 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Jake Jakub

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 2022, when Jake had 790 and Jakub had 49.

Side by side

  Jake Jakub
Total US births 129,5393,067
Most in one year 4,487184
Babies in 2025 68236
Estimated living today 115,0003,000
Median age today 2318
Peak year 20042008
Best rank 98th boys1,031st boys
Rank in 2025 457th3,240th
First recorded 18801981
Girls / boys 217 / 129,3220 / 3,067

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 Jakubs are over 18. That is 5 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 Jake Jakub
Poland 27297,378
England and Wales 67,1096,267
Ireland 6,3541,373
Scotland 3,280543
Northern Ireland 2,630236
Belgium 365317
France 295160
Switzerland 141211

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: Jake and Jakub.