Humanverse

Bless

Bless is a boy's name that peaked in 2018, when it was the 2,893rd most popular in the United States. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 6,143rd. About 800 Blesses are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 8.

Popularity, 1880–2025

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

girls named Bless boys named Bless

Girls and boys called Bless

Share of the name given to girls, 1880 to 2025 0% 25% 50% 75% 100% 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 319 girls and 492 boys in all, and in 2024 the split was 12 to 35.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 14 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.

By the numbers

Total US births
811
Estimated living today
800
Median age today
8
Peak year
2018
Best rank
2,893rd
Rank in 2025
6,143rd
First recorded
1987
Girls / boys
319 / 492

How old the living Blesses are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 15 30 45 60 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 811 babies given the name since 1987, about 800 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 670 of them are children and 0 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2017 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 Bless is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Bless is most concentrated in New York (7.6×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 2018

The most popular boys’ names the year Bless peaked:

All the names of 2018

Bless elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
England and Wales boys Bless 14 3,990th
France girls Bless 5 5,339th

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.

Related names

Bless against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

Compare Bless with a name of your own

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.