James

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named James boys named James

By the numbers

Total US births

5,274,520

Estimated living today

2.9 million

Median age today

58

Peak year

1947

Best rank

1st

Rank in 2025

6th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

23,882 / 5,250,638

How old the living Jameses are

born that year still alive today

Of the 5,274,520 babies given the name since 1880, about 2.9 million are alive — 56 in every hundred. Roughly 241,000 of them are children and 1.1 million are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1967 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

Origin Hebrew

The English New Testament form of Jacob, from Middle English James, from Old French James, from Vulgar Latin Iācōmus, spoken and altered pronunciation of Latin Iācōbus, from Ancient Greek Ἰάκωβος, from Ἰακώβ, from Biblical Hebrew יַעֲקֹב, from the third-person singular masculine imperfective form of the Semitic verb "to heel" (with various meanings), in turn from עָקֵב (“heel of the foot”).

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

Notable Jamess

• James Joyce (1882–1941)Irish novelist and poet
• James Cook (1728–1779)British explorer, cartographer and naval officer
• James Madison (1751–1836)President of the United States from 1809 to 1817
• James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879)Scottish physicist
• James Watt (1736–1819)British engineer
• James Monroe (1758–1831)president of the United States from 1817 to 1825
• James A. Garfield (1831–1881)president of the United States in 1881
• James Buchanan (1791–1868)president of the United States from 1857 to 1861

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

Where James is most common

• NY349,759
• PA306,891
• CA289,423
• TX286,404
• OH264,109
• IL255,577
• NC213,517
• MI190,489
• GA188,283
• TN176,086

Relative to how many babies each state records, James is most concentrated in Mississippi (1.8×), South Carolina (1.7×), Alabama (1.7×), Kentucky (1.6×).

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

Names of 1947

The most popular boys’ names the year James peaked:

• James
• Robert
• John
• William
• Richard
• David

All the names of 1947

James 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.

James: 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, James is most concentrated in Geneva, where 0.14% of children were given it – 141 of them.

James: rank by region

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

In 2025, James was given 2 times or more in 3 regions of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, James appears in the lists for Province of Walloon Brabant (16th), Province of Luxembourg (27th), Brussels-Capital Region (35th), Province of Flemish Brabant (45th), Province of Namur (50th), Province of Hainaut (72nd), Province of Liège (106th), Province of Limburg (109th), Province of Antwerp (181st) and Province of East Flanders (198th).

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.

James by city

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

James 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 James lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 1,661 men called James 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 35 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 17 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

• Jamie
• Jameson
• Jamal
• Jamison
• Jami
• Jamari
• Jamar
• Jamel
• Jamey
• Jamir
• Jamaal
• Jamila

James against another name

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

• James vs Jamie
• James vs Jameson
• James vs Jamal
• James vs Jamison
• James vs Jami
• James vs Jamari

Compare James with a name of your own