Ulysses
Ulysses is a boy's name that peaked in 1999, when it was the 642nd most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 1,196th. About 12,000 Ulysseses are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 33.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Ulysses boys named Ulysses
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 18,680
- Estimated living today
- 12,000
- Median age today
- 33
- Peak year
- 1999
- Best rank
- 642nd
- Rank in 2025
- 1,196th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 25 / 18,655
How old the living Ulysseses are
born that year still alive today
Of the 18,680 babies given the name since 1880, about 12,000 are alive — 62 in every hundred. Roughly 3,100 of them are children and 2,200 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1992 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 Ulyssess
- Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885)president of the United States from 1869 to 1877
- Maximilian Ulysses Browne (1705–1757)Austrian field marshal
- Ulysses Llanez (born 2001)American soccer player
People named Ulysses with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Ulysses is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Ulysses is most concentrated in South Carolina (4.3×), Georgia (4.1×), Florida (2.5×), Alabama (2.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1999
The most popular boys’ names the year Ulysses peaked:
Ulysses elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Ulysses | 35 | 3,112th |
| France boys | Ulysses | 35 | 4,989th |
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.
Related names
Ulysses 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.