Humanverse

Jessie

Jessie is a girl's name that peaked in 1918, when it was the 75th most popular in the United States. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 823rd. About 115,000 Jessies are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 43.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Jessie boys named Jessie

Girls and boys called Jessie

Share of the name given to girls, 1880 to 2025 0% 25% 50% 75% 100% 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Jessie crossed from boys to girls in 2010, having already crossed in 1950, and has stayed there for 16 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 72% girls, which is roughly where it still is.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 146 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.

By the numbers

Total US births
281,367
Estimated living today
115,000
Median age today
43
Peak year
1918
Best rank
75th
Rank in 2025
823rd
First recorded
1880
Girls / boys
170,036 / 111,331

How old the living Jessies are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 281,367 babies given the name since 1880, about 115,000 are alive — 41 in every hundred. Roughly 12,000 of them are children and 32,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1982 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 Jessies

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

Where Jessie is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Jessie is most concentrated in Mississippi (5.7×), Arkansas (3.5×), Alabama (3.4×), South Carolina (2.9×).

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

Names of 1918

The most popular girls’ names the year Jessie peaked:

All the names of 1918

Jessie elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
France girls Jessie 5,605 216th
England and Wales girls Jessie 5,519 168th
New Zealand girls Jessie 1,123 46th
France boys Jessie 570 702nd
Scotland girls Jessie 413 177th
Ireland girls Jessie 400 244th
Belgium girls Jessie 364 205th
England and Wales boys Jessie 199 1,440th
Northern Ireland girls Jessie 150 134th
Ireland boys Jessie 34 337th
Belgium boys Jessie 13 782nd

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.

Jessie: rank by region

In 2011, Jessie was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.

Region Spelling Place Children
Flanders Jessie 664 7

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.

Jessie 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 girls Jessie 2,337 2,637
the Netherlands boys Jessie 440 536
Finland girls Jessie 29 42
Finland boys Jessie 5

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

Jessie against another name

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

Compare Jessie with a name of your own

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.