Essence
Essence reached its high-water mark in 1998 at number 456, and has been recorded 10,761 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 1,163rd. About 11,000 Essences are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 23.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Essence boys named Essence
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 10,761
- Estimated living today
- 11,000
- Median age today
- 23
- Peak year
- 1998
- Best rank
- 456th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,163rd
- First recorded
- 1973
- Girls / boys
- 10,744 / 17
How old the living Essences are
born that year still alive today
Of the 10,761 babies given the name since 1973, about 11,000 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 3,700 of them are children and 0 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2002 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.
Notable Essences
- Essence Atkins (born 1972)American actress
- Essence Carson (born 1986)American basketball player
People named Essence with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Essence is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Essence is most concentrated in South Carolina (2.8×), North Carolina (2.3×), Georgia (2.2×), Florida (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1998
The most popular girls’ names the year Essence peaked:
Essence elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Essence | 30 | 4,001st |
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
Essence 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.