Jesse
About 444,920 American babies have been named Jesse since 1880, most of them around 1981. In 2025 it ranked 184th. About 333,000 Jesses are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 37.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Jesse boys named Jesse
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 444,920
- Estimated living today
- 333,000
- Median age today
- 37
- Peak year
- 1981
- Best rank
- 37th
- Rank in 2025
- 184th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 12,492 / 432,428
How old the living Jesses are
born that year still alive today
Of the 444,920 babies given the name since 1880, about 333,000 are alive — 75 in every hundred. Roughly 45,000 of them are children and 34,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1988 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
From Ancient Greek Ἰεσσαί, from Hebrew יִשַׁי.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Jesses
- Jesse Owens (1913–1980)American track and field athlete
- Jesse Jackson (1941–2026)American Baptist minister, activist, civil rights leader, politician, and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition
- Jesse Eisenberg (born 1983)American actor
- Jesse Lingard (born 1992)English footballer
- Jesse James (1847–1882)American outlaw, confederate guerrilla, and train robber
- Jesse McCartney (born 1987)American singer and actor
- Jesse Spencer (born 1979)Australian actor and musician
- Jesse Jane (1980–2024)American pornographic actress
People named Jesse with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Jesse is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Jesse is most concentrated in Alaska (2.1×), Wyoming (1.6×), Nevada (1.6×), Oregon (1.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1981
The most popular boys’ names the year Jesse peaked:
Jesse elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Jesse | 13,466 | 51st |
| New Zealand boys | Jesse | 3,965 | 18th |
| Belgium boys | Jesse | 1,772 | 127th |
| France boys | Jesse +1 spelling | 1,290 | 405th |
| Ireland boys | Jesse | 655 | 142nd |
| England and Wales girls | Jesse | 416 | 965th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Jesse | 248 | 99th |
| Switzerland boys | Jesse | 235 | 457th |
| Scotland boys | Jesse | 166 | 191st |
| France girls | Jesse | 25 | 6,590th |
| Poland boys | Jesse | 16 birth registrations | 442nd |
| Ireland girls | Jesse | 14 | 559th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Jesse | 4 | 363rd |
| Scotland girls | Jesse | 3 | 760th |
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.
Jesse: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Jesse | 184 | 0.015% | 352nd |
| French boys | Switzerland | Jesse | 48 | 0.011% | 378th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Jesse | 3 | 0.005% | 179th |
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, Jesse is most concentrated in Bern, where 0.01% of children were given it – 29 of them.
Jesse: rank by region
In 2025, Jesse was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Jesse | 536 | 10 |
In 2024, Jesse was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mazowieckie | Jesse | 324 | 2 |
In 2024, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Jesse appears in the lists for Province of Flemish Brabant (153rd), Province of East Flanders (221st) and Province of Antwerp (293rd).
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.
Jesse by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 20 | 383rd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Jesse 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 | Jesse | 17,752 | 21,724 |
| Finland boys | Jesse | 11,118 | 12,420 |
| the Netherlands girls | Jesse | 326 | 412 |
| Finland girls | Jesse | 9 | 16 |
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
Jesse 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.