Jack

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Jack boys named Jack

By the numbers

Total US births

759,677

Estimated living today

419,000

Median age today

23

Peak year

1927

Best rank

16th

Rank in 2025

15th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

2,734 / 756,943

How old the living Jacks are

born that year still alive today

Of the 759,677 babies given the name since 1880, about 419,000 are alive — 55 in every hundred. Roughly 157,000 of them are children and 93,000 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.

Where the name comes from

From Middle English Jak, Jakke (also Jackin, Jankyn, etc.), from Anglo-Norman Jakke, *Janke, from Middle Dutch Janke, diminutive of Jan (“John”); equivalent.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Jacks

• Jack London (1876–1916)American author, journalist and social activist
• Jack Nicholson (born 1937)American actor and filmmaker
• Jack Kerouac (1922–1969)American writer
• Jack Ma (born 1964)Chinese businessman
• Jack Black (born 1969)American actor, comedian, singer, musician and producer
• Jack Lemmon (1925–2001)American actor
• Jack Kilby (1923–2005)American electrical engineer
• Jack LaLanne (1914–2011)American exercise instructor

People named Jack with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Jack is most common

• CA62,096
• NY52,761
• TX45,680
• OH43,720
• IL40,983
• PA37,929
• MI36,488
• IN23,543
• GA20,326
• MO19,924

Relative to how many babies each state records, Jack is most concentrated in Wyoming (2.0×), Montana (1.8×), Oklahoma (1.7×), Idaho (1.6×).

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

Names of 1927

The most popular boys’ names the year Jack peaked:

• Robert
• John
• James
• William
• Charles
• Richard

All the names of 1927

Jack elsewhere

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.

Jack: births by region

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

By canton, Jack is most concentrated in Geneva, where 0.07% of children were given it – 72 of them.

Jack: rank by region

In 2025, Jack was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.

In 2025, Jack was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Jack appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (31st), Province of Flemish Brabant (35th), Province of West Flanders (46th), Brussels-Capital Region (68th), Province of Limburg (132nd), Province of East Flanders (132nd) and Province of Hainaut (215th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Poland below 2 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.

Jack by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Jack 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.

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.

Where Jack lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 584 men called Jack were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Men: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 21 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 31 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Jacob
• Jacqueline
• Jackson
• Jackie
• Jace
• Jacquelyn
• Jaclyn
• Jacklyn
• Jacoby
• Jacques
• Jacquelin
• Jacey

Jack against another name

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

• Jack vs Jake
• Jack vs Jace
• Jack vs Jacob
• Jack vs Jacqueline
• Jack vs Jackson
• Jack vs Jackie

Compare Jack with a name of your own