Moses
About 43,342 American babies have been named Moses since 1880, most of them around 2016. In 2025 it ranked 515th. About 29,000 Moseses are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 25.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Moses boys named Moses
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 43,342
- Estimated living today
- 29,000
- Median age today
- 25
- Peak year
- 2016
- Best rank
- 460th
- Rank in 2025
- 515th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 51 / 43,291
How old the living Moseses are
born that year still alive today
Of the 43,342 babies given the name since 1880, about 29,000 are alive — 67 in every hundred. Roughly 10,000 of them are children and 3,800 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2000 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
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Mosess
- Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786)German-Jewish philosopher and theologian
- Moses Malone (1955–2015)American basketball player
- Moses Hess (1812–1875)German philosopher
- Moses of Chorene (410–490)5th-century Armenian historian
- Moses Simon (born 1995)Nigerian association football player
- Moses the Black (320–395)monk, priest and martyr in Egypt
- Moses Montefiore (1784–1885)British financier and Jewish activist
- Moses Kiptanui (born 1970)Athletics competitor from Kenya
People named Moses with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Moses is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Moses is most concentrated in South Carolina (4.2×), Hawaii (4.1×), Mississippi (2.1×), Georgia (2.1×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2016
The most popular boys’ names the year Moses peaked:
Moses elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Moses | 1,551 | 511th |
| France boys | Moses | 85 | 6,309th |
| Switzerland boys | Moses | 64 | 830th |
| Ireland boys | Moses | 30 | 479th |
| Belgium boys | Moses | 26 | 1,246th |
| Scotland boys | Moses | 11 | 535th |
| Poland boys | Moses | 2 birth registrations | 599th |
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.
Moses: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Moses | 57 | 0.005% | 616th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Moses | 7 | 0.002% | 679th |
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.
Moses: rank by region
In 2015, Moses was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Moses | 865 | 5 |
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.
Moses by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 3 | 531st |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Moses 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 | Moses | 34 | 77 |
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.
Related names
Moses 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.