Bob
Bob is a boy's name that peaked in 1959, when it was the 128th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 9,714th. About 36,000 Bobs are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 67.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Bob boys named Bob
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 93,308
- Estimated living today
- 36,000
- Median age today
- 67
- Peak year
- 1959
- Best rank
- 128th
- Rank in 2025
- 9,714th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 322 / 92,986
How old the living Bobs are
born that year still alive today
Of the 93,308 babies given the name since 1880, about 36,000 are alive — 39 in every hundred. Roughly 220 of them are children and 24,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1958 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
Probably from a medieval hypocorism of Rob.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Bobs
- Bob Dylan (born 1941)American singer-songwriter
- Bob Marley (1945–1981)Jamaican reggae musician
- Bob Hoskins (1942–2014)English actor
- Bob Hope (1903–2003)American entertainer
- Bob Saget (1956–2022)American stand-up comedian
- Bob Newhart (1929–2024)American stand-up comedian and actor
- Bob Dole (1923–2021)American politician
- Bob Fosse (1927–1987)American choreographer, dancer, and director
People named Bob with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Bob is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Bob is most concentrated in Wyoming (3.5×), Oklahoma (3.4×), Montana (3.1×), Nebraska (2.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1959
The most popular boys’ names the year Bob peaked:
Bob elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Belgium boys | Bob | 629 | 305th |
| France boys | Bob | 320 | 961st |
| England and Wales boys | Bob | 143 | 2,097th |
| Ireland boys | Bob | 8 | 529th |
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.
Bob: rank by region
In 2025, Bob was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Bob | 177 | 33 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Bob appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (139th), Province of Flemish Brabant (155th), Province of West Flanders (162nd) and Province of East Flanders (226th).
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.
Bob 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Bob | 8,920 | 10,107 |
| Finland boys | Bob | 30 | 50 |
| the Netherlands girls | Bob | 6 | 28 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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
Bob 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.