Bess
The girl's name Bess has been in the national records since 1880, with 7,176 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 14,942nd. About 1,400 Besses are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 51.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Bess boys named Bess
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 7,176
- Estimated living today
- 1,400
- Median age today
- 51
- Peak year
- 1889
- Best rank
- 164th
- Rank in 2025
- 14,942nd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 7,171 / 5
How old the living Besses are
born that year still alive today
Of the 7,176 babies given the name since 1880, about 1,400 are alive — 19 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1974 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.
Where the name comes from
Variant of Beth.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Besss
- Bess Truman (1885–1982)First Lady of the United States from 1945 to 1953
- Bess Armstrong (born 1953)American actress
- Bess Meredyth (1890–1969)Film actress, Film writer
- Bess Flowers (1898–1984)American actress
- Bess Myerson (1924–2014)American model, city commissioner, TV show celebrity; first Jewish-American and first Miss New York elected Miss America
- Bess of Hardwick (1527–1608)notable figure of 16th century Elizabethan English society (c.1521-1608)
People named Bess with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Bess is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Bess is most concentrated in New York (3.1×), Texas (3.0×), Oklahoma (2.9×), Illinois (2.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1889
The most popular girls’ names the year Bess peaked:
Bess elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Bess | 134 | 1,966th |
| Belgium girls | Bess | 47 | 1,084th |
| France girls | Bess | 5 | 6,691st |
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.
Bess: rank by region
In 2023, Bess was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Bess | 749 | 6 |
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.
Bess 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Bess | 6 | 10 |
A count of people on a register – 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
Bess 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.