Humanverse

Jobie vs Joby

American parents have registered 1,242 Jobys since 1880, against 508 Jobies. Neither name reached five babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jobie against Joby, 1880 to 2025 0 13 25 38 50 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jobie Joby

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

Of the 100 years in which either name was published, Joby for 69 years and Jobie for 31 years. The lead changed hands 11 times.

Side by side

  Jobie Joby
Total US births 5081,242
Most in one year 1445
Babies in 2025 under 5under 5
Estimated living today 3201,100
Median age today 4842
Peak year 19191977
Best rank 2,265th boys1,515th boys
Rank in 2025 unrankedunranked
First recorded 19161939
Girls / boys 60 / 44868 / 1,174

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 Jobies alive today are over 48; half the Jobys are over 42. That is 6 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

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

Country Jobie Joby
England and Wales 80263

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: Jobie and Joby.