Jefferson
About 24,440 American babies have been named Jefferson since 1880, most of them around 2009. In 2025 it ranked 829th. About 18,000 Jeffersons are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 26.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Jefferson
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 24,440
- Estimated living today
- 18,000
- Median age today
- 26
- Peak year
- 2009
- Best rank
- 588th
- Rank in 2025
- 829th
- First recorded
- 1880
How old the living Jeffersons are
born that year still alive today
Of the 24,440 babies given the name since 1880, about 18,000 are alive — 75 in every hundred. Roughly 6,700 of them are children and 2,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1999 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 a surname
. The placenames in the United States are named for Thomas Jefferson.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Jeffersons
- Jefferson Davis (1808–1889)President of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865
- Jefferson Farfán (born 1984)Peruvian association football player
- Jefferson (born 1983)Brazilian association football player
- Jefferson Lerma (born 1994)Colombian association football player
- Jefferson Montero (born 1989)Ecuadorian association football player
- Jefferson Pérez (born 1974)Ecuadorian race walking athlete
- Jefferson Fredo Rodrigues (born 1978)Brazilian association football player
- Jefferson Vieira da Cruz (born 1981)Brazilian association football player
People named Jefferson with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Jefferson is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Jefferson is most concentrated in Georgia (2.6×), Virginia (2.5×), South Carolina (2.4×), Maryland (2.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2009
The most popular boys’ names the year Jefferson peaked:
Jefferson elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Jefferson | 1,635 | 399th |
| England and Wales boys | Jefferson | 195 | 1,909th |
| Belgium boys | Jefferson | 107 | 535th |
| Ireland boys | Jefferson | 14 | 347th |
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.
Jefferson: rank by region
In 2007, Jefferson was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Jefferson | 404 | 6 |
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.
Jefferson 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Jefferson | — | 13 |
A count of people on a register – 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 Jefferson lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 862 men called Jefferson 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
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Balears, Illes | Jefferson | 47 | 0.075 | 880 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Jefferson | 60 | 0.060 | 1,127 |
| Palmas, Las | Jefferson | 35 | 0.060 | 1,359 |
| Valencia/València | Jefferson | 77 | 0.057 | 1,056 |
| Rioja, La | Jefferson | 9 | 0.056 | 1,012 |
| Madrid | Jefferson | 185 | 0.054 | 1,024 |
Listed in 31 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 21 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
Jefferson 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.